


three gifts (but none a shoe)

by Engineer104



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Cinderella Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Cinderella Elements, Costume Parties & Masquerades, F/M, Fluff, Magic Mirrors, Mutual Pining, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26420548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: Annette's family is happy until it's not. Her father marries ambitious but cruel Lady Cornelia, and it only grows worse from there. But while Cornelia begins to deprive Annette of everything she cherishes, she discovers the mirror, and what - or who - she finds in it may be her solace.// aka the netteflix Cinderella AU with slight inspiration taken from Ella Enchanted (book) that Annette deserves
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 101
Kudos: 119





	1. The Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> This is exactly what it says on the tin, aka a Cinderella AU i affectionately dubbed "Cinderella Face-Time AU" before i settled on an actual title. it was only a matter of time before i wrote a netteflix fairy tale adaptation >:)
> 
> That being said word of warning for Cornelia being extremely...unpleasant to Annette? potential verbal abuse at times and a few instances of mild physical abuse in later chapters.
> 
> And if none of that puts you off, i hope you enjoy the fic!

Once upon a time, in a northern city gripped by winter, a young girl named Annette Fantine Dominic sang her heart’s desire. Upstairs in her family’s modest manse - well, modest for nobility - her mother lay abed, ailing. She’d spied the blood on the handkerchief earlier for all her mother tried to hide it in her fist, and she knew from the frowns on the faces of all manner of physicians and priests that trudged through the entryway with her father trailing after them that she was not improving.

Where most young girls in Fhirdiad would’ve turned to the small shrine to the goddess they kept in the manse, Annette sang. To anyone who overheard, it was the nonsense of a child, but to her it spoke of the plaintive devotion of a prayer.

_“Mother be well, mother be fine, mother to see me tucked into bed tonight.”_

It didn’t rhyme, to her frustration, but that only made her more determined for her mother to improve so that one day she might serenade her with only the best lyrics.

Eventually her father stopped letting her into the bedchamber to sit beside her mother, even when she protested that she would want her Annette to read to her, and eventually while she sulked in her own bedroom voices drifted up the stairs.

She opened her door a hair and peeked out through the gap. A maid and the cook stood at the top of the stairs looking down, but their whispers couldn’t cover up the conversation below.

“I’m sorry, Sir Gustave,” said an unfamiliar male voice, “but I’m afraid your wife is not long for this world.”

“Surely there is something else you can do,” Annette’s father said, and his tone made something in her heart crack.

“There’s nothing,” said the other man, sighing. “She’s fought the illness as bravely as any knight, but no spell or tonic will cure her of it.”

“But…” Their voices grew distant, their footsteps fading with them, but Annette no longer listened.

A lump stuck in her throat as she knelt in her doorway and sniffed, but she forced herself to her feet and, with no father to command her otherwise, trudged down the hall on trembling legs to her parents’ bedchamber door.

Mother always slept these days, so Annette didn’t knock to avoid waking her. She nudged the door open, wincing when the hinges creaked, but passed through with nary a touch of guilt. Shadows engulfed the room with no candle lit and curtains drawn tight over the window, so she stepped carefully so she wouldn’t trip.

When she reached Mother’s bedside, her hand found hers where it lay over the covers. Cold and clammy and smaller than Annette ever realized. Her feeble, unsteady breathing filled the room, and as she stood there, she held her own breath, waiting…

She didn’t hear the door opening behind her.

“Annette,” her father’s low, somber voice said, “I told you not to come in here.”

“But Mother…”

“Your mother needs her rest,” he insisted. His hand rested against her back, as much a dismissal as his words, but still she held on.

She choked back a sob trying to force its way up her throat. “B-but Mother’s been resting,” she retorted. “Mother never—”

“Annette.” The warning in her name cut through anything she could ever hope to say.

Annette pressed her trembling lips together as she let her mother’s hand slip through her fingers and turned towards the door.

But not before she thought Mother’s eyes, as deep a blue as hers, cracked open.

The next morning when the priest came, it was not to heal but to deliver final rites.

* * *

Annette rarely saw Father after Mother’s funeral. His work as a knight sworn to the king kept him busy, and though she tried to stay up most nights until he returned home - like Mother used to - she almost always fell asleep in the parlor, using a book as a pillow.

Sometimes she woke the next morning in her bed, carried either by a footman or Father himself, but as she grew older - and a bit bigger - one servant or another would wake her and guide her upstairs to bed.

Her uncle, the Baron of Dominic, visited before Annette’s tenth birthday, and for that week Father actually lingered at home. He looked wearier than she remembered before Mother’s death, his hair grayer than ever. He’d never been the sort to smile for any reason, but his sternness would always soften for them.

But not anymore.

When Mother left them, she took something of Father with her, and Annette didn’t know how she could ever get it back.

Her uncle, usually almost as dour as Father, brightened the household. He paid for her birthday cake from her favorite bakery, the one she hadn’t gone to since…before, he listened to her pluck a tune of her own composition on her harp, he asked after her lessons, how she liked her governess, if she wanted to be a mage like her mother or a knight like her father when she grew up.

And Annette smiled and wondered why she couldn’t be both.

For some reason that made Baron Dominic laugh, but she hadn’t heard any of her family laugh in so long she didn’t really mind.

And at the end of the week, on the day after her birthday, she overheard him speaking with Father in the study behind the closed door.

“That girl needs a mother, Gustave,” her uncle said.

“She has her governess,” her father protested.

“A governess is a poor substitute,” argued Baron Dominic. “Will she give her everything a mother would?”

“She has a mother.”

“Not in this life, not anymore.” Baron Dominic sighed, and Annette could imagine him pressing a hand to his face. “I know you miss her, but if you marry again you wouldn’t be replacing her, Gustave.”

“I…know,” Father agreed, “but I haven’t the time to court anyone, and who would agree to marry an old widower with a daughter like me?”

“Any number of ladies might have you,” Baron Dominic offered. “You are a noble knight of the Kingdom, and a descendant of the Elite Dominic. You needn’t wed a young lady, so perhaps find a widow or another woman closer to your age if you prefer.”

“You suggest it like it’s easy.”

“Because it is!” exclaimed her uncle, his voice tinged with enough exasperation Annette flinched as if he’d directed it at her. “For the goddess’ sake, you live in _Fhirdiad_! You’re in the king’s circle!”

“I don’t know, brother…”

“Then how’s this, Gustave?” said Baron Dominic. “Either you remarry by Annette’s next birthday and give the poor girl a new mother, or when next I travel to Fhirdiad I return to Dominic with my niece.”

Annette’s breath caught, and she clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp.

“You wouldn’t,” said Father.

“I would,” he said. “I hate to play this card, but I am the head of your house, so in this you will obey.”

Her father would bow his head, weighed down by her uncle’s expectations, as he said, “I…will.”

And Annette, with her heart racing for the fear of being caught eavesdropping - or from the promise she heard exchanged - fled.

* * *

Father kept his promise and wed Lady Cornelia. At first Annette had been glad for their union, for her new stepmother was a court mage, the famous sorceress who rescued the Kingdom from the plague that gripped Fhirdiad and the northern territories in the first year of her own life. A great mage, someone she could look up to!

But Lady Cornelia proved cold, and snide, and during her father’s long absences when he would leave Fhirdiad to shield the king on his travels, any praise she had for Annette’s studies withered into disdain.

She eyed her latest proof before her lips curved into an unkind smile. “I’m sorry, darling,” she said, her tone cloying in its sweetness, “but this just won’t do.”

“But my governess—”

“—is surely not a sorceress of my caliber,” her stepmother reminded her. “If you wish to rival me one day, you will have to do better.”

And rather than returning the paper with her proof on it to Annette, she gripped both sides of it and tore it in half.

The rending of the paper was nothing to that of her heart.

Cornelia relinquished the scraps to her before disappearing into the study - once shared by her father and mother, now with few signs of either of them left - and Annette fled upstairs to her bedroom where no one could see her cry.

When next Father spent longer than an evening at home, Annette dared to approach him. He glanced up from the letter he was reading, his frown deepening when he spotted her in the parlor doorway, spinning with her hands clasped behind her back and her stomach flipping.

For all she knew, Annette was about to tell him his wife - her stepmother - hurt her feelings, and for all she knew her father wouldn’t believe it of the kind, benevolent woman he married.

And he married Cornelia for Annette’s sake. What could she do if she…ruined that?

“What is it, Annette?” he wondered when she drew no closer.

Annette swallowed and ducked her head. “N-nothing,” she said before asking, “Are you leaving again soon?”

Father sighed. “His Majesty is traveling to Duscur next week,” he told her. “This is one journey I will not be taking with him.”

Her heart leapt with hope. At last, time to spend with him! “Why not?” she asked, though what she really wanted to know was _what will we do together?_

He smiled very faintly, and Annette couldn’t help returning it. “He will be well-protected,” he said. “My most talented squire was knighted not so long ago. _Sir_ Glenn and the rest will do well enough.”

Sometimes, when Father was at his most…generous, he spoke of teaching the crown prince and a handful of others, but he’d never named them before. “Is he as sweet as His Highness?” Annette wondered before she could stop herself. She so loved these little peeks into his life when he wasn’t home, that same life that consumed him.

To her surprise her father’s smile slipped. “He is…not,” he confessed, “though he is strong.”

“And if he’s going with the king,” Annette said, “then you’ll be at home?”

“I will be,” said her father. “Perhaps I spend too little time with you.”

She grinned, eagerness overtaking her. Not only would Father be around, but perhaps if he was here, he might witness Cornelia’s cruelty for himself!

But her hope shattered quickly, thanks to Cornelia herself, for within moments she swept into the parlor to greet Father with a brief kiss to his cheek. “Gustave, dear,” she said, “you are home early this evening!”

“I felt it necessary for now,” he said simply. “I regret that His Majesty does not require my service on his journey, but I will not begrudge the time spent here.”

Cornelia smiled, though to Annette it looked insincere. “I am so very pleased,” she said. “It has been a long time since we three ate dinner together, as a family.” Her eyes slid towards her, where she still stood in the doorway. “Young Annette has missed your company so, and I’m afraid I’m a poor substitute for her father while I act as her mother.”

Because of course, while Father was home, Cornelia _acted_ the part of a loving wife and doting mother.

But Annette knew the truth.

If only she knew why Cornelia hated her so.

* * *

The king her father so faithfully served perished in Duscur, massacred with so many of his knights, including this Sir Glenn that once squired for Father. The king died dreadfully to hear Cornelia tell it, a horrible, violent death brought about by Duscur itself, dissatisfied with the peace he tried to offer them.

Only Prince Dimitri survived, made an orphan, and too young to be crowned.

And one day after the news reached Fhirdiad, a mere day before the king’s funeral, Father left for the castle.

He never returned.

* * *

Annette sang again, mourning the family she once had, and always where Cornelia couldn’t hear her. She sang to dry her own tears when her stepmother dismissed her governess, when she threw sheafs of her sorcery notes into the hearth, when she flipped through her journal and tossed it aside as “drivel”, when she expelled her from her bedroom and banished her to the attic because the study wouldn’t suffice for her own studies.

Somehow the harp escaped her notice, or Annette smuggled it and some of her mother’s old belongings into the attic early enough with the help of a maid.

She didn’t like it in the attic. With only thin slats for windows, it smelled musty and moldy, and every step she took kicked up a cloud of dust that tickled her nose and throat. The ceiling sloped so sharply even Annette at her stature couldn’t walk the length of it without the top of her head brushing it, and vermin scratched in every shadowy corner.

A household’s worth of clutter filled the room, everything from old furniture draped with frayed sheets and crates brimming with unfamiliar memorabilia. Annette spent hours sorting through these, wiping dust off old miniature portraits of family members she didn’t recognize and flipping through books with yellowed pages.

She choked back tears when she recognized her mother’s handwriting in the margins of a few, old sorcery textbooks from her studies at the Royal School.

But steadily she learned the boundaries of her new home, including how to behave around Cornelia to avoid the worst of her ire. Stay out of her path when in the midst of an experiment, when the door to the study or Annette’s old, repurposed bedroom was closed. Say nothing of the strange men in long robes that passed through the entryway, the ones that spoke with her stepmother in hushed, urgent tones. Do not study magic, or anything, and learn instead that she might one day be worthy of wedding a nobleman to “better” her station.

“Your father was a wretch,” she complained to her once, and Annette hated how she spoke of him, as if he’d died like Mother, like the king, too. “But for all I despise him for abandoning you to me, I am loathe to deny the tools at my disposal.”

And Annette couldn’t deny hers either.

Cornelia steadily gutted the household of its paltry staff so all the housework fell on Annette lest they live in refuse. She avoided setting foot in her…laboratories, stifling her own curiosity of what a court mage might be up to here when surely she had better facilities in the royal castle, and eventually the work consumed her.

But on her worst days, when her defiance fell on Cornelia’s deaf ears, when all it earned her was a slap across her face, Annette thought about writing to her uncle.

Until Cornelia, with her uncannily accurate suspicion, demanded she turn out her pockets and found her half-penned letter.

Her latest avenue of escape denied her, Annette retreated to her attic, the only place where she could be alone with her thoughts and her disappointment.

It threatened to crush her each time. Every day she desperately held onto the hope Father would return, or her uncle might visit, it slipped further and further away.

Annette threw herself at the foot of her bed - barely a bed, little more than an old, lumpy mattress that sat on the floor - and buried her face in her hands. She shook with painful sobs, gasping for breath, always seeking for air while her stepmother sought to suffocate her.

She blamed Father for leaving her to her, only for guilt that she would to seize her. Father couldn’t possibly have known. If he had, he never would’ve left, surely…

Her crying stilled eventually. She hiccuped and rubbed her eyes, sniffling, before finding the wherewithal to stand and—

Oh. She didn’t even have a small mirror to hang from the wall.

For some reason that only made her scowl. To be denied something so—so _simple_ as a mirror, the ability to make herself look presentable for more than just the occasional dinners that Cornelia forced her to sit through, frustrated her.

On some impulse Annette sifted through the old, blanketed furniture that littered the opposite end of the attic. She tore aside threadbare linens, unearthing chairs, a sofa she didn’t trust to be free of vermin and worse, a faded desk that might still be serviceable…

A long mirror.

Her breath caught, and she leaned towards it, taken aback by its shine and—

Her face, puffy red eyes and tear-stained cheeks, didn’t look back at her.

She touched the mirror and found the silver - perfect silver without a hint of tarnish - smooth and cool under her fingertips. A wooden frame carved with an intricate pattern of roses bordered it, and Annette might’ve considered it beautiful if not for the way it just didn’t… _reflect_.

This time when she touched it her eyes slipped shut. She concentrated, unsure what she searched for, but the instant she felt it she knew.

The mirror carried a spell, but Annette couldn’t tell its function or origin, not with how unpracticed she was. She opened her eyes and rested her hands on her hips, scowling at the mirror with no reflection, and declared, “I need to study more.”

She turned around with a sigh - if only she could figure out how - but a motion at the corner of her eye made her freeze.

Annette faced the mirror again…and looked into an unfamiliar room.

A boy stared back.

She jumped away, heart leaping into her throat, at the same instant the boy’s jaw dropped. He looked over his shoulder, into the room behind him, as if he expected her to be standing there, but when he turned back to her his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

Red-rimmed eyes, just like hers must be.

Annette’s breath stuck in her throat as she leaned towards the mirror, at the boy. He had dark hair swept up into a knot and thin piercing eyes, gangling limbs that seemed too long for his slim body…her age, she thought, though she rarely had cause to speak to any boys at all.

Perhaps most curiously the boy wore a sword dangling from his hip, as if he expected to fight at a moment’s notice.

Perhaps he did, though he couldn’t fight her.

…could he?

Annette bit her lip before resting a hand against the mirror’s cool surface.

The boy flinched but didn’t shrink away. He just stared at her hand then raised his and—

Her lips parted with surprise when he braced his hand against hers. She still only felt the mirror under, but she could see the contours of his palm and how he spread his fingers, longer and thicker than hers, wide.

The boy pulled his hand away first.

Annette swallowed her disappointment and withdrew hers. She tried smiling at the boy and offering a wave before saying, “H-hello! My name is Annette! What’s—what’s yours?”

The boy blinked at her, then shrugged and pointed to his ear.

“I…what do you—”

His lips shaped words, and Annette understood.

He couldn’t hear her, and she wouldn’t be able to hear him.

“Oh, of course…” she trailed off, and this time her heart sank, disappointment biting deep. But she bolted to her feet and raced to her bed, rooting through her meager belongings for a notepad, inkwell, and quill.

Her heart beat against her ribs with a mounting excitement, and to her relief the boy was still in the mirror - was he literally _inside_ the mirror? - when she returned.

Her cheeks warmed under his intent gaze as she uncapped the inkwell and dipped her quill. She scrawled on the notepad before turning it around to show him what she’d tried to tell him.

The boy’s eyes narrowed at it. For a long heartbeat she worried he would ignore her, but then he raised a finger - wait? - and disappeared from her view.

Annette tapped her fingers against her notepad, nervous for a reason she couldn’t explain. What was she doing, communicating with this boy, and _how_ was she doing it?

He slipped back into view with a notebook, and after setting up his own inkwell on the floor beside him he scratched something on his notebook and showed it to her.

His handwriting had a slanting quality she might’ve found pretty if she didn’t have to squint to read it.

“F…Felix?” she read. He nodded when she glanced back up at him - maybe he could read her lips, somewhat - so she grinned before writing on her notepad again, _It_ _’s nice to meet you, Felix._

His eyebrow quirked when he looked over what she showed him. He seemed to mull over his reply too, and then he showed her, _Where are you? What is this?_

 _I_ _’m in Fhirdiad,_ she told him simply. _I don_ _’t know. Where are you?_

Felix tapped his quill - a fine one, Annette couldn’t help noticing, couldn’t help a brief surge of envy - against his chin before writing his response: _Fraldarius._

Disappointment tugged at her chest and soured her smile. _That_ _’s so far,_ she wrote.

 _Not really,_ he wrote back. _I used to go to Fhirdiad all the time._

Oh? _Used to? What changed?_

Felix’s face contorted with a deep frown. He stared down into his lap, not writing anything, but before Annette could so much as wonder if she needed to apologize for prying, a voice called up the stairs:

“Annette! Put on a pot of tea for my guests!”

She stiffened, remembering Cornelia, remembering that she took everything else Annette found precious away. Her heartbeat in her throat as she scribbled one last question into her notepad before brandishing it:

_Can we talk again same time tomorrow?_

Felix’s gaze met hers for the briefest instant before it slipped away.

He nodded, and Annette smiled before standing and draping the mirror with the sheet again.

When she tripped over a table leg and spilled tea on one of Cornelia’s strange guests, even her stepmother’s scolding couldn’t dampen her spirits because for once, she had something to look forward to.

* * *

It didn’t take long for the boy in the mirror to become one of Annette’s only bright spots.

With Cornelia pulling her in every direction by day, Annette stayed awake late into the night, finishing her chores by the light of the last embers burning in the hearth. Then she would steal a candle - they had enough, her stepmother wouldn’t miss one - and climb into the attic and light it before tugging the sheet from the mirror.

Sometimes Felix already waited for her with a notebook and ink at the ready, but sometimes Annette waited for him with tense shoulders and fingers that shook too much to hold a quill steady. The room behind him - it looked like a bedchamber too, though one grander than her attic - was always better lit than her surroundings, and the mirror’s surface gave off a faint glow. It hummed with magic, with potential, and when she needed to wait she ran her hands along the carved wooden frame, fingertips trailing the delicate woodwork of the flowers and vines, searching for something that might hint at its origin.

And then Felix would step into view, and she would beam at him, and though he rarely smiled she learned to watch for the way the corner of his mouth lifted, or his eyebrow twitched, or he would toy with his quill between writing to her.

He didn’t speak easily at the start. She first worried he might not like her, that he only indulged her out of some misplaced kindness, but it didn’t take long for her to realize he might just be shy, or reluctant to say too much to a stranger in a mirror.

But slowly she drew the words out of him, like she used to draw music from her harp before she hid it in the depths of the attic lest Cornelia take it away from her like she took everything else.

Well, almost everything.

She told Felix about her magic, and a little about her music (though she refused to say anything about her own compositions). His gaze sharpened the one time she found the courage to pull out her harp, and he wrote to her, _I want to listen._

 _But you can_ _’t hear,_ she argued.

_Play anyway._

Annette hesitated. Her fingers itched to pluck at the strings, to fill the attic with an easy tune. She’d lost track of how long it had been since she had played - surely not since Father…left her to Cornelia - and she didn’t doubt she’d sound horrible and unpracticed, and the harp itself would be terribly out of tune.

And though darkness enveloped the manse, though Cornelia would be abed as she should be, fear gripped her chest, so she shook her head and wrote to Felix, _I can_ _’t._

 _Why not?_ he wondered, his eyebrows drawn together.

Annette dipped her quill into ink and touched the nub to her notepad but…paused. Could she…tell him about Cornelia and her cruelty? Could she? Would it matter, or would it only tempt fate, somehow?

 _It_ _’s late,_ she ended up writing instead. _I_ _’ll wake my stepmother. She won’t like that._

 _Another time?_ Felix wrote.

Her eyes flicked up to his face, curious what she might find there, and why he was almost…eager. Her stomach flipped, still uncertain, and she wrote, _Maybe one day you can listen too._

She crossed it out without showing it to him, bemoaning the wasted ink, but for his benefit left, _Maybe._

Felix frowned but to her relief didn’t press.

Annette, eager to change the subject, wrote to him, _You were wearing a sword that first time even though you_ _’re my age. Do you want to be a knight?_

His lips twisted into a scowl as he shook his head more violently than she thought the question warranted. He scribbled something on his notebook before showing her, _I don_ _’t want to die for someone else._

She blinked, confusion filling her, and responded, _But you don_ _’t have to._

_Do you know many knights?_

Annette streaked ink across her page in her haste to reply, _My father is one. He hasn_ _’t died._

But where was he? Perhaps he might as well be dead for his absence, but then she’d be an orphan in truth with no hope of escaping Cornelia.

Then Felix wrote, _He probably wishes he could die for someone._

Annette’s breath caught, horror gripping her. The venom on his face startled her, but worse still was how her chest tightened and her hand shook as she scrawled, _You don_ _’t know what you’re talking about._

His eyes widened, yet still he wrote to her, _Yes I do. My father is glad my brother died._

 _How could he be?_ she demanded. _That doesn_ _’t make sense!_

 _He said so,_ Felix told her, and when her gaze darted to his face she saw his jaw set stubbornly.

Annette’s heart raced in her chest, from the quarrel, from the hot tears pricking at her eyes again. The impulse to agree, just so she wouldn’t push her only friend away, rose in her, but she swallowed it, because he just had to be wrong about—about everything!

 _Knights only care about obeying their liege,_ Felix wrote when she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. _They don_ _’t care about other people._

 _That_ _’s not true!_ Annette insisted. She rubbed at her eyes, as if that would keep back the tears, but hissed when cool ink wet her cheek too. _My father cares about more than that,_ she added.

_Does he? Good for him._

Annette heard a sarcastic bite in his words, though he didn’t speak aloud. Maybe it was his…viciousness, how her once-shy companion in the mirror held a bitter flame in his hands he sought to pass to her.

Doubt wormed into her heart, doubt that Sir Gustave might one day return, might see what her stepmother did and whisk her away to her uncle’s home, or help her enroll at the Royal School of Sorcery when she was the right age, or—

But he hadn’t sent a single word to her, never.

Shame writhed in her abdomen, and before Felix could see her tears as they fell she jumped to her feet and threw the sheet over the mirror.

* * *

Annette was late to trudging downstairs in the morning. Her head ached with her poor sleep, when she tossed and turned on her lumpy mattress until slipping into dreams she forgot when she woke. She thought Father might’ve been there, his broad back to her while she reached out before he ignored her and walked away.

She didn’t wake till Cornelia’s voice shouted up the stairs, “Girl, get down here! Where’s my breakfast?”

She’d rolled over and groaned before sliding out of bed. Setting foot in the dining room - because Cornelia refused to dine in the kitchen even for breakfast - with lumpy oatmeal and unpeeled fruit earned her a scolding for everything from how she barely looked presentable - she hadn’t had the time to brush her hair - to the dust on the cabinet of her mother’s old fancy dinnerware.

Annette, too groggy and with her chest tight after her quarrel with Felix, barely heard her.

Only later, after Cornelia explained her long list of chores for the day, when a dish she’d been cleaning slipped through her fingers and shattered against the kitchen floor, did she stare at the shards and burst into tears again.

She didn’t know when Father would return - or if he would at all - and realized she couldn’t rely on him to rescue her from her stepmother’s whims. Maybe if she even knew where he had gone, she could’ve written him, but she didn’t doubt Cornelia would, somehow, thwart her in that too.

Somehow, Annette understood as she swallowed the rest of her sobs and grabbed a broom, she would have to free herself.

* * *

Annette began to study late into the night, deciphering her mother’s old Reason textbooks by candlelight. She drew upon fond memories learning the basics from her governess before Cornelia dismissed her, only to discover her foundation was lacking.

Years behind, she didn’t doubt, and she would have to work hard to catch up to her peers if she wanted to enroll at the Royal School.

And she could only work while her stepmother slept after finishing her mountain of chores, or while she was at court.

Eventually Annette found solace in her studies, but though she spoke aloud (in a low voice) so she might hear someone else, as if her governess still tutored her, it couldn’t replace having a friend.

* * *

Annette’s heart raced when next she faced the enchanted mirror.

The same room still stared back at her. She released a breath, trying to ease the tension in her shoulders as she settled in front of the mirror with a notepad, inkwell, and quill.

The tallow candle in the holder beside her burned dim and low while she waited. She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her cheek against her knees, watching the unreflective surface of the mirror.

Her eyes burned with exhaustion after another long day. Cornelia had returned in a rage, raving to an associate about the Duke of Fraldarius insulting her, about how he influenced the orphaned crown prince against her after everything she’d done for the Kingdom.

“I freed this damn Kingdom of the plague that killed his own mother!” she’d ranted. “How dare he suggest I have too much power?”

“He’s not king yet, my lady,” her companion had reminded her. “You have time to show him his error.”

“Yes, dear Rufus will buy us time,” Cornelia had said, her tone level though she still scowled. “We still have two years until the boy’s coronation, and then—what in the name of Nemesis’ ghost are you doing, child?” Her glare had fallen on Annette where she stood frozen with a feather duster in hand. “Were you eavesdropping on me? Did your imbecile of a father never teach you manners?”

“He’s not—” Annette had tried to protest before Cornelia scoffed.

“He left you, you foolish child,” she’d reminded her while wagging a finger. “Now get out of my sight!”

She hadn’t needed to be told twice.

The fleeing almost galled her, when her stepmother was in a mood it was for the best to stay out of her path. And what pride did Annette have left to her anyway, with ink staining her hands and soot smearing her cheeks? She was no longer the daughter of a knight sworn to the king but a servant to her own stepmother, the most wretched, grasping lady of the duke regent’s court.

The grim, awful reminder of it and her own loneliness drove her to the mirror, desperate to, somehow, make amends with Felix. She hadn’t sought him in weeks, too frustrated with his words, too tangled up in her secret studying, too tired and weary of heart to reach out for someone who might not reach back.

Her eyes started to slip shut, and Annette might’ve let them if something in the mirror hadn’t moved.

Her breath caught when Felix stepped into view, when his gaze found her crouched there, when his jaw dropped as he scanned her and—

Had he gotten taller? Had it been long enough since they met at the mirror for him to grow?

He glanced over his shoulder as Annette unwound her limbs, a grimace crossing his face before he held a finger up to her. Her heart skipped a beat as she waited again, when he slipped away from view and returned with a notebook.

Felix sat in front of her, and she held her breath as he uncapped his inkwell and wrote. He turned his notebook around, and Annette read, _I didn_ _’t think I would see you again._

Her chest tightened, but she admitted on her own notepad, _I_ _’m still a little mad, but I missed you._ After a heartbeat’s hesitation, she added, _I don_ _’t have many friends._

Or any, but she didn’t want to confess that.

 _Are we friends?_ Felix wrote.

 _I want us to be,_ Annette told him. _You said some cruel things, but I still missed you._

Even in the low lighting on his side of the mirror, his cheeks darkened, and he avoided her gaze as he wrote into his notebook, _I know. I_ _’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made assumptions about your father._

 _You shouldn_ _’t have,_ Annette wrote, frowning, _but—_ She broke off, lips pressing together, unsure all over again, if she should hold back or if she could tell him…anything.

Felix sensed her reticence, for then he showed her, _What?_

She scribbled down before she could regret it, _My father left me to my stepmother after the king died, so you were a little right. A little!_

She half-expected him to be smug, to smirk like he sometimes did when bragging about mastering a new sword maneuver, but his eyebrows drew together. _That was awful of him,_ he wrote to her.

For some reason, despite the emotion still thick in her throat, Annette’s lips curled into a smile, and she felt just a little better. She wrote, _How have you been?_

Felix’s expression slackened, though he did not smile, and after a little awkwardness they slipped back into their old patterns. He wrote about his training, about avoiding his other lessons, and asked her about if she practiced on her harp lately.

Annette confessed she hadn’t, and she smiled a little wider as she explained about teaching herself more complex magic and that she would escape one day into the Royal School.

That made a little furrow appear on his forehead, and he noted, _I_ _’d think someone would want to escape_ _from_ _a school, not into it._

She covered her mouth to muffle a laugh, but that couldn’t stifle the warmth unraveling in her chest. But it did dampen it as she told him, _I have to. It_ _’s my only chance._

_What do you mean?_

Annette licked her lips, thinking carefully while her heart pounded. Her quill pressed into the paper, leaving an indentation even before she began writing, _My stepmother, I want to escape h—_

The clock in the tallest tower of Castle Fhirdiad tolled the midnight hour.

She scratched away what she almost wrote and instead showed Felix, _I should go to sleep._

His face fell but he nodded and replied, _Sleep well, Annette._

A peculiar heat filled her, and despite their looming parting she couldn’t help smiling as she wrote, _Tomorrow again?_

The barest hint of a smile crossed his face when he nodded again.

Annette grinned even as she stood and draped the sheet over the mirror, hiding him away like a secret, something Cornelia couldn’t take away. Giddiness gripped her, alerted her so much she worried she might not fall asleep easily, and as she slid under her scratchy quilt her smile didn’t even falter.

Maybe one day, after she escaped her stepmother and enrolled at the Royal School, she would find Felix in the flesh even if she traveled all the way to Fraldarius for it, but until then she held onto the hope of seeing his face staring back at her from the mirror.

* * *

Cornelia only became more and more unpleasant as time wore on. Her demands lengthened in complexity, and she even sent Annette out on difficult and inane errands that took her hours to complete with warnings that she would know if she dawdled anywhere. Her shouting was unbearable, her visitors rude and unhelpful, and Annette—

Annette hated her more than she ever thought it possible to hate anyone at all. A part of her worried and fretted that somehow, she’d discovered her stolen evenings studying or sitting in front of the enchanted mirror to scribble notes to Felix, that making sure she retreated to her attic every night so exhausted she fell asleep with her face pressed to a book or ink staining her cheek when she woke was how she chose to deprive her of them.

But Annette refused to be deterred, no matter what, not when magic was her hope for her own future, and Felix was…Felix.

Something…changed over the course of the next two years. He grew a little taller, a little broader and his jaw a little sharper and his hands clutching at his notebook and quill bigger. He no longer looked awkward carrying a sword on those evenings she rolled her eyes through his demonstrations, not like he did before. He still wore his hair the same, tied into a bun at the back of his head, but something about how the loose flyaway strands framed his face drew her eye.

She wanted to tuck them away, though she doubted they were long enough to reach his ears, or even see how long his hair really was if he left it loose. Annette didn’t know where this new impulse came from, but for once she was grateful for their true distance keeping her from giving into it.

Somehow, Felix, almost a man, had grown handsome, and Annette began to feel…inadequate sitting in front of him.

Rubbing at her cheeks with a damp washcloth to wipe away the soot perpetually staining them was a poor substitute for a good scrubbing in a bath, yet she tried anyway. And Felix wore such fine clothes, betraying a careless wealth that Annette couldn’t help envying after her stepmother squandering for her bizarre experiments what little her father left them, and all she had for their evenings were stained, threadbare dresses that could never keep her warm enough in her drafty attic in the winter months.

But Felix’s lips always twitched into one of his small smiles when he first spotted her, and Annette always forgot her worries as she smiled back. A flutter always filled her chest, even superseding her indignation when he teased her, but this time—

Oh, this time—

Annette understood _why_.

Heat rose to her cheeks, and her quill nearly slipped through her fingers. Her heart beat against her ribs with the force of the realization and how it gripped her in a fist so tight she couldn’t imagine it ever letting her go.

She had… _feelings_ for Felix.

In that instant she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She would, and then he would read it on her face as surely as if she’d written it for him on her notepad. He would read it, and it would repulse him - he spoke of the chivalric romances his friend liked with such disdain - and all she would’ve accomplished with letting him see would be driving him away like she did her father.

Annette composed herself, wrote a new song for her expression, and swallowed the giddiness rising in her, exchanging it for trepidation. She lifted her face, prepared to offer Felix a greeting and nothing more, but—

He held his notebook up, a single sentence scrawled onto it in his slanting hand:

_I_ _’ll be in Fhirdiad for the coronation._

Her breath caught in her lungs, and she forgot how to write. Her gaze drifted over the notebook to Felix’s face.

He wasn’t looking at her, instead glancing over his shoulder, as if he too was…nervous, uncertain, hesitant.

But he turned his head when Annette dipped her quill into the inkwell, when she wrote with a trembling hand, _Do you want to meet?_

His expression morphed into something…wild, something hopeful before he nodded with vigor. He wrote into his notebook, _Will you be at the coronation?_

Annette froze. Cornelia would surely go - she was a member of the court, even if one falling from grace - but she doubted that meant anything for her own attendance. _I don_ _’t know,_ she admitted. _My stepmother might not want me there._

 _Damn your stepmother,_ Felix replied with a scowl.

 _I_ _’ll sneak out,_ Annette promised, as surely as the resolve to make good on her words gripped her. Her jaw set, and when she glanced up from her notepad her eyes met his.

His lips curved into the faintest smirk, and he wrote, _Bring your harp._

She scowled at him. _Why? It_ _’s too big!_

 _You promised I could listen to you play,_ he reminded her.

Annette stiffened; that he remembered shocked her, and shook her, and sent heat rushing to her face all over again. _Another time,_ she told him instead.

 _Fine,_ he agreed, to her relief.

And that evening when she bid him good night, she felt almost…content.


	2. The Coronation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will Annette finally meet Felix? Well, stories always have a way of getting worse before they get better...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me while writing this entire chapter: ah, the return of Annette's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day
> 
> Anyway...warning for the usual Cornelia nastiness, though she's extra terrible this chapter.
> 
> And with that, please enjoy! I will be there at the end with a box of tissues

The Archbishop of the Church of Seiros traveled to Fhirdiad in the spring after Prince Dimitri’s eighteenth birthday. Annette was at the market when the grand procession escorting her rolled into Fhirdiad. The shadows of Pegasuses drifted over the ground, drawing the eyes of the crowd that gathered on either side of the street, but before she could look with them something else caught her eye.

Astride a horse trailing after the carriage sat her father.

She would recognize him anywhere, even in a tabard emblazoned with the Crest of Seiros rather than the Crest of Blaiddyd he used to wear as a royal knight.

Shock rooted her to the spot, and her grip on her basket tightened. Her eyes tracked Father’s progress in the procession, all the while as carriage wheels rolled and horses trooped by beneath Church banners that streamed behind their bearers in the cool spring breeze.

As a body the assembled crowd dispersed. A few eyed her when she just stood there, staring, her heart racing and a wild hope swooping in her chest. Home…Father had come home.

Annette needed to go home.

She uprooted her feet and spun around, and forgoing the rest of her shopping - what did it matter when Father would be there to expel Cornelia? - she sprinted the entire way.

She might’ve stumbled over empty air or an uneven paving stone a few times, but she burst through the back door, gasping to draw breath into her aching lungs before she blurted, “Father? Father!”

Heels clicked against the kitchen’s stone floor, and Cornelia stepped inside. “What are you blathering about, child?” she demanded.

Annette clutched at her blouse, right over where her heart pounded from her run. “Is he—he’s not here?” she wondered.

“Your father?” Cornelia crossed her arms and tapped two manicured nails. “The fool hasn’t set foot inside this house in years. Why would today be any different?”

“But I saw—he was—just now—the Archbishop—”

“Oh, perhaps you saw a man who looks like him among the Knights of Seiros escorting her,” she suggested with an unpleasant smirk curling her lips. Before Annette could protest that she knew what she saw, she continued, “That’s no matter. Prince Dimitri’s coronation is in a few days, and I have a task for you.”

“You always have a task for me,” Annette seethed. She threw her basket onto the kitchen table and stood upright. “I’m going to the coronation, I’m going to find my father, and he’s going to get rid of you!”

Cornelia drew herself to her full height. She was as tall as most men in Fhirdiad and towered over her, glaring down at Annette with undisguised venom in her eyes. A single clawed hand shot out and grabbed her chin.

A gasp escaped Annette when her stepmother’s nails dug into her skin. “You listen to me, you little brat,” she hissed. “Your _foolish_ father cares not a whit for his precious little daughter, and the sooner you understand that, the happier you’ll be.”

“W-why do you care if I’m—ow!” she broke off with a yelp at a flame scalding her skin, a hint of the magic that her stepmother wielded at her fingertips.

She smiled very slightly, meanly. “I don’t actually,” she said, “but a girl who knows her place is an obedient one, and since you are here and so eager to please, I will make use of you.”

“I’m—”

“Do this one task for me,” Cornelia said, “and perform it to perfection, and I will grant you one favor.”

Annette stiffened, every protest she could make dying in her throat, drowned out by her pulse roaring in her ears. A task…for a favor? But since when did Cornelia ever offer her something in return?

Whatever she wanted, she must want it terribly to be willing to…repay her.

“W-what do you want me to do?” she wondered.

She exhaled when her stepmother let her go and stepped back, smiling as she all but simpered, “That’s what I like to here.”

* * *

The herald standing sentry outside the great hall of Castle Fhirdiad announced them as “Lady Cornelia Arnim and her daughter Annette”.

“Stepdaughter,” Cornelia corrected him before towing Annette past him and into the hall.

She avoided tripping over the longest hem she’d worn in her entire life by lifting it in her free hand, her other tucked into her stepmother’s arm as they ventured through the crowd of well-dressed nobles milling about, eager for a chance to congratulate and petition (a kind word for it) the newly crowned king. Annette couldn’t spot him from her position, both too short to peer towards the dais over the heads of the other attendants and too busy trying not to stumble.

Cornelia at least slowed to speak with a gentleman of the court, and it gave Annette the chance to sate her curiosity and look around her, at the finely embroidered gowns draping the ladies and the dapper coats worn by lords and knights. She tugged at her unfashionably high collar, her stomach twisting unpleasantly, and craned her neck when the crowd parted and finally afforded her a view of the dais.

Her breath caught.

“Felix?” she whispered, because that _was_ him, standing - and brooding - near the wall a few short paces from Prince—wait, no, King Dimitri. He’d tied his hair up the same way, a sword dangled from his hip though this was a _party_ , and he crossed his arms and glared out over the crowd of nobles as if they personally offended him.

He wore a fine coat too, of course he did, over teal trousers and with a Crest shaped just like a sword overlaying a shield embroidered on his high collar.

Annette’s head spun; she thought she might’ve fainted if Cornelia didn’t cut into her thoughts with a, “And this is my charming young stepdaughter, Annette. Annette, this is…Tomas. He is the librarian at Garreg Mach Monastery.”

Her wide eyes snapped to her stepmother and a hunched, elderly man in the robes of a scholar. “H-hello,” she said, wincing when her voice cracked. She tried to catch sight of Felix again over the man’s shoulder, but he’d disappeared.

Had he even stood there, so close that she could’ve found him, could’ve stood face to face with him, perhaps touched him? Was he just something her mind conjured - had he always been? - to make her existence more bearable?

But there, between the shoulders of two ladies, a dark-haired young man skirted along the wall.

He walked rapidly, closer to where Annette half-listened to Cornelia’s conversation with Tomas. Her breath stuck in her lungs, and she opened her mouth to call out to him only to remember he wouldn’t know her voice.

And what business had Annette, especially where her stepmother would undoubtedly make note of it, to attract the attention of a member of one of the most powerful noble houses in the Kingdom? It would draw the eyes of every person in this room, and they would all gossip, and judge, and who knew what else.

So she let herself look after Felix, memorizing the pattern of his arrogant gait, until he slipped from the hall.

“…staring at? What’s so captivating it has your attention, girl?”

Annette jumped, her stepmother’s question dousing her in cold water that trickled down her spine as she turned back towards her. Tomas had drifted away, leaving her alone with Cornelia and her suspicious glare.

“Nothing,” she said, too quickly from how her eyes narrowed.

“Nothing…” she echoed before following where her gaze had landed. Her lips pressed together in a thin, displeased line. “Do take care to keep your mind here, in this castle, rather than in the clouds when you meet His Majesty, won’t you?”

“When I…what?” Annette’s heart skipped a beat in alarm. “You want me to do what?”

“You will be meeting His Majesty,” Cornelia informed her. “Not only will you be meeting him, but you will make such an impression that he will fall hopelessly in love with you and demand your hand in marriage once I suggest the match to his dear uncle.”

“ _What_?” A strange sort of panic gripped her, that her stepmother would even seek to control this aspect of her life. “That’s—that doesn’t make sense! That’s impossible, he won’t—I don’t want—”

“You don’t want to marry the King of Faerghus?” Cornelia snorted. “What kind of young noblewoman doesn’t want to marry a king?”

“I don’t want—not _him_ ,” she said, aware she babbled, but shock made her slower of wit.

“Then who else?” Her stepmother crossed her arms and stared down her nose at her. “I admit you are hardly _eligible_ even if you will be of age this moon, but he doesn’t need to know that until after the wedding, wouldn’t you agree?”

Annette’s jaw flapped, limp and useless to expel her protests.

“Don’t worry, child,” Cornelia assured her, rolling her eyes. “He’s quite handsome and polite, perhaps even charming. You needn’t think _you_ won’t like him.” Her claw-like hand closed around Annette’s wrist, tugging her deeper into the hall and towards the dais.

“But _why_?” she finally demanded as they glided - or Cornelia glided - away.

“I do not know how much you understand of politics or court life after your foolish father sheltered you so,” she explained, “but it is simply to secure my appointment.” Her face twisted into a grimace. “Unfortunately the new king isn’t very fond of me, but even he wouldn’t dare to expel family.”

“He won’t look twice at me,” Annette warned her.

“Oh, he will,” Cornelia insisted, “and if he doesn’t, then I’ll make the rest of your insignificant human life _miserable_.”

Fear tried to claw its way through her chest and up her throat, but she swallowed it. Was that it then? If she couldn’t somehow charm a man she’d never met in a single evening she would forever be at her stepmother’s mercy?

Shouldn’t marrying a king _free_ her from that, somehow? Not that it would happen, not to Annette. Escaping Cornelia could not be so simple as conniving her way into someone’s heart.

She led her to the dais as the line of courtiers dwindled, where the new king, a tall, handsome blond youth, stood with an older, stately dark-haired and whiskered man. Beside her Cornelia stiffened and muttered, “Perfect. _He_ _’s_ here too.”

But then she plastered a beatific smile onto her face, the very image of friendliness, and after an armored knight beckoned for them she approached the dais before melting into a curtsy. “Your Majesty!” she greeted. “Please allow me to give you my congratulations. A blessed day it is after awaiting it for so long. Long may you reign, sire.”

The dark-haired man actually rolled his eyes, but King Dimitri politely said, “Thank you, Lady Cornelia.”

Cornelia’s hand closed around Annette’s arm, tugging her forward before she could stumble her way into a curtsy of her own. “And this is my stepdaughter, Annette.” She then hissed under her breath, “Offer him your hand!”

Annette tried to compose her face into something more pleasant than wide-eyed surprise, or anything that betrayed how her heart pounded at facing the king, even if he did look close to her age and her father had once instructed him in weapons years ago, before everything went terribly wrong. She held her hand out, and King Dimitri took it.

His hand was warm and rough with calluses, but Annette felt nothing but her nerves when he kissed her knuckles.

He let her go, and she hid her hand behind her back so no one would see her wiping sweat from her palm.

“I didn’t know you were married, Cornelia,” the other man on the dais noted, light blue eyes sharp as they slid from her stepmother to Annette. A sense of familiarity crept over her, as if he saw right through this ruse, right through _her_ , and she took a subconscious step backwards.

“I never deigned to mention it, Rodrigue,” Cornelia said, bearing her teeth in a facsimile of a grin. “It never was important, and I never let my…rather unsatisfactory marriage affect my work here in Fhirdiad, did I?”

The man, Rodrigue, cupped his chin, eyes narrowing. “No, I suppose you never did.” He glanced at Annette, and she straightened. “From what house are you, young lady?”

Startled at him addressing her so directly, she blinked before saying, “I’m from—”

“Oh, leave her alone, Rodrigue,” her stepmother cut in with a scoff. “Why don’t we give her and His Majesty the chance to speak? She was so very eager to meet him, and I simply must indulge her.”

“What are you up to now?” he wondered, crossing his arms.

“Nothing at all!” Cornelia assured him. “Let our new lion king off his leash at his own coronation party, Your Grace, by all means.”

He glared at her. “His—”

“It’s all right, Lord Rodrigue,” King Dimitri offered with a smile. “I don’t mind.” He turned his smile to Annette, and she tentatively returned it.

Maybe, if Cornelia withdrew, it would give her the chance to slip away and search for Felix!

But no, she wouldn’t go far, and Annette just couldn’t risk displeasing her, not here.

She didn’t bother watching her stepmother lure Lord Rodrigue - wasn’t the old regent, King Dimitri’s uncle, named Rufus? - away and instead glanced at the king. “I’m, um, I’m sorry,” she told him as heat rushed to her cheeks. “She’s a little…”

“Overbearing?” he suggested. When Annette nodded, he laughed. “I grew up around her too. I’ve known her almost as long as I could walk, although…” Something dark flickered across his face, so quickly she doubted she saw it at all. “You do look a little familiar though, um, Annette?”

“Yes? I do?” Annette covered her face as her stomach flipped. “Maybe that’s because, um…my father, he was a knight here, sworn to your father.”

“He was?” King Dimitri sounded almost hopeful before the smile slipped from his face. “I’m sorry, perhaps I’ve dredged up unpleasant memories since you’re speaking in the past tense.”

“No, no!” Annette scrambled to reassure him, waving her hands, ignoring how her chest tightened. “It’s not what you think, probably! And, well, to be honest, I don’t really want to talk about him.”

“You don’t? That’s all right then.”

Her lips curled into a smile. Maybe they could get along? Or at least this interaction wouldn’t be a disaster. “I did want to ask you about someone though, since I saw him lurking here earlier, but…do you know someone named Felix?”

Her heart raced as she waited, but he didn’t keep her waiting long.

His eyebrow quirked, and he asked, “You know Felix?”

“I…somewhat?” Annette admitted with a wince. She clasped her hands together and added, “It’s a little complicated.”

“He’s never mentioned anyone named Annette to me,” King Dimitri confessed, “though we’re not on the best of terms these days either. I think he left sometime ago, though Lord Rodrigue might know better. Perhaps when he returns you can—”

“Why would he know?” she wondered, only to blush when she realized she just interrupted the king of Faerghus. “Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“That’s all right,” said King Dimitri. “I’m, well, I’m not entirely sure what you’re apologizing for, but you’ve done nothing wrong!”

Annette glanced over her shoulder while she gripped the fabric of her skirts, braced for Cornelia’s return. “Please don’t ask Rod—Lord Rodrigue,” she said. “The fewer people that know, the less likely my step—I mean, the better.”

“Why not?” he asked. “He’s Felix’s father.”

“Because he’s—what?” Her head snapped around so she could stare at King Dimitri. “ _That_ was Felix’s father?”

His eyes narrowed, and something of the polite youth slipped away, overtaken by someone more suspicious, who would question her intentions and make it that much more difficult to fulfill Cornelia’s wishes. “Are you sure of your claim that you’ve met Felix?” he pressed. “Or are you as much of a grasping sycophant as your stepmother?”

“W-what?” Annette stuttered, her jaw dropping as alarm seized her. “I’m not—I’m _nothing_ like my stepmother! How—no!” She spun around and tripped her way down the dais, ignoring King Dimitri’s attempt to assist her.

She focused on shoving her way past the line of courtiers, between nobles clustered together drinking sparkling wine and eating finger foods, and only as she drew further away from the dais did panic grip her.

What had she just done?

Any moment the king’s knights would charge after her and arrest her for turning her back to him, or the damn _Duke_ of Fraldarius would seek her out and demand what she wanted of his son, or Cornelia would—

Annette didn’t know where Cornelia was, and perhaps that should’ve alarmed her, but a dark cloud lifted instead.

For a time, she was…free. She could down a glass of wine, stuff her face with finger foods, speak to whomever she wanted.

Annette could find Felix.

Her heart leapt with excitement, and a true smile tugged at her lips. She maneuvered her way through the press of bodies to the edge of the hall, searching out the same path she spied him take earlier. With every step closer her pulse rushed with the anticipation, with her own eagerness, with—

Annette crashed headlong into another body. A gasp tore from her, and she reeled backwards, rubbing at a shoulder that collided with something hard - armor? - before looking to see who stood in her path.

Her father stared back at her, eyes wide with an instant recognition.

“F-Father?” Annette said, her voice cracking. “Is that—what are you doing here? Have you returned to Fhirdiad? Do you know what—do you know what my stepmother has done?”

But her father bowed his head and turned his back to her, pretending he neither heard nor saw.

“Father?” She reached for his arm and might’ve darted after him if he didn’t stop in his tracks.

“Hello, Gustave,” Cornelia’s voice drifted towards them. She stood opposite Annette, in her father’s path, a sneer curling her lips. “I never expected to see you in Fhirdiad ever again.”

“My duty to the Archbishop demanded I come,” Gustave told her. “And I would thank you to call me by my new name, Cornelia.”

“Gilbert, was it?” Cornelia said. “Is that the identity you envisioned for yourself? How easily you exchanged loyalties, rather like changing the Crest you wear.”

A chill crept down Annette’s spine; had her stepmother known where Sir Gustave went this entire time and hidden it from her, his _daughter_?

“I exchanged nothing I deserved to keep,” he protested.

Cornelia’s gaze slipped past him, and when it landed on Annette she smirked. “Well, I thank you for killing my husband,” she said. “I hardly recognize the senile fool who now stands in his place.”

Father didn’t react to her insult, only said, “And I can no longer recognize you as my wife, nor Annette as my daughter.”

Her breath caught, and she had to swallow around a lump caught in her throat. But she could do nothing to fight the burning tears that stung her eyes as they slipped past her eyelids.

“W-what would Mother think?” she wondered in a tremulous voice. Guilt bites her for voicing such a question, but surely, if he only thought of her mother, the wife he loved so much a piece of him died with her, he might—

Father stiffened. “I am no longer worthy of her regard or yours,” he said, and though he almost whispered it, his words fell on Annette’s ears with all the harshness of a shout.

“So that’s how it is,” Cornelia said. “The king you swore to protect dies, and you destroy your own living family out of shame. Chivalry and knighthood are curious things, don’t you agree, child?”

Annette jumped, but the only reply she offered was a sniffle. She choked back a sob, bit back the wave of shame at crying in public, before a father who refused to face her, before her tormentor, and shook her head.

She didn’t know what she disagreed with, only that she couldn’t agree with _her_.

“A pity,” her stepmother said. “Well, the apple certainly does not fall far from the tree, because today proved you’re as dismal a failure as him.”

Annette wanted to fight, to argue, to defend herself, but all she could do under the heat of her stepmother’s glare and the chill of her father’s rejection was hunch her shoulders to ward against the great hall, against the castle, against the whole world, and cry.

* * *

Cornelia rarely struck Annette, but today proved to be an exception to many things. And in the midst of her reeling and emotional fugue, from spying Felix in the flesh, from learning his father was Duke Fraldarius, from her stepmother demanding she court the _king_ , to encountering her own father for the first time in so many years, she didn’t notice the slap until her ears rang with the force of it.

The side of her head throbbed dully with her heartbeat as she raised a hand to her cheek, more shocked than anything.

Cornelia glowered at her, as if she hoped to incinerate Annette on the spot, and seethed, “You imbecile! Not only did you fail to woo the king, but you made him _suspicious_ of your intentions! You fool of a child, have you learned nothing from me?” Her grasping fingers found purchase in Annette’s hair, ruining the careful styling, making her gasp from the tug at her scalp.

“L-let me go!” She tried to claw at her stepmother’s hand, tried to tug herself away, but all it earned her was more pain. “You haven’t—you haven’t taught me anything worth learning!” she snapped through the tears again pooling at the corners of her eyes.

“I’ve tried to teach you independence!” she screeched before shoving her away.

Annette stumbled backwards, falling over a chair and landing hard on her back. The shock of the stone floor knocked the air from her lungs and traveled up her spine, and she laid there, numb with it, to it, wanting nothing more than to curl up alone on her lumpy bed in the attic and cry herself to sleep.

“All these years I’ve looked after you, and what do you give me in return?” Cornelia raved.

Annette didn’t bother replying. She wouldn’t want to hear it. She just scowled in a desperate attempt to keep the tears at bay for a little longer.

“You’re lucky I don’t turn you out of this house,” she pronounced, resting her hands on her hips.

“Do it,” she dared her as she sat upright and glared at her. “Turn me out! The streets would be better than you!”

“You wouldn’t last a week,” Cornelia sneered. “You’re nothing more than a clumsy oaf, you’d never find work, and even if you once showed promise with magic you’ve squandered it.”

“No thanks to _you_!” Annette retorted, because even at her lowest she would never confess to her stepmother her late-night studies, never give her anymore than she knew she had to give.

“My only hope to rid myself of you is to marry you off,” her stepmother decided. “You may have a Crest, but I doubt even a lowly merchant would want a wife like you.” With that she spun on her heel and marched out of the kitchen, leaving Annette to collect herself and lick her wounds.

A quick glance at her reflection in a dark window revealed the livid bruise Cornelia’s strike left high on her cheek. She poked it and winced before she met her own puffy eyes.

Annette sniffed but shed no more tears. She trudged up the stairs and—

She remembered she’d agreed to meet Felix that evening, after the coronation. She’d promised she’d sneak out, she’d find him in the central square, she’d entertained a fancy of embracing him like an old friend - and in a sense he _was_ \- and maybe he would stiffen with surprise at first but then his arms would encircle her and it would be like she’d grown up hugging him.

And they would speak for real, with their voices and not with ink on so many pages.

But now Annette hesitated.

Her chest tightened as her gaze slid over the mirror draped with its sheet, and she clutched the notepad she wrote in for him close to her chest. She skimmed over the promise she made him - would she ever be able to play her harp for him? - before dropping it onto her bed.

She couldn’t go anymore, not after everything that happened since the coronation. What if King Dimitri spoke to him, warned him of a girl that claimed to know him, of Lady Cornelia’s “grasping” stepdaughter? What if Felix doubted her and thought she might try to use him for some selfish gain?

What if Cornelia found out and tried to _make_ her use him?

What if Annette…wanted to?

Marriage _could_ help her escape, she knew it as soon as Cornelia herself mentioned it, but the last thing Annette wanted was to trap someone else for it, especially not someone she might…love.

She perched on the edge of her bed and wrapped her arms around her legs, and though she no longer cried her heart wept.

* * *

Annette measured the time it took to travel from Fhirdiad to Fraldarius in the time it took for Felix to reappear in the mirror.

It was a rare evening where Cornelia had yet to return home from the castle, and she’d left a plate of dinner for her in her study. A quiet day, and one Annette took advantage of by studying earlier than she usually risked, as eager as ever to distract herself from her heartache and work towards her feeble plan for freedom.

And then she’d checked the mirror, both eager for and dreading what - who - she would find.

Felix stood on the other side, and when his piercing amber eyes - not blue, not like his father’s - fell on her, her traitorous heart skipped a beat.

She could’ve met him face to face, without this stupid mirror and leagues of distance between them, and she gave it up. Yet she held her notepad up, prepared with her apology, but the expression on his face froze her.

His eyes had widened when they found her face, before his eyebrows drew together and his lips twisted into a scowl. He pointed to his cheek and reached for his notebook and scribbled in an unsteady hand, _Who did that?_

Annette blinked, startled as she touched her cheek where he indicated and remembered Cornelia’s stinging slap.

She hadn’t realized the bruise hadn’t faded yet.

She found her ink and quill and flipped to a clean page in her notepad to write, _It_ _’s nothing._

_It_ _’s NOT nothing,_ Felix insisted, glaring at her from over his notebook. _Who hurt you?_

Annette’s hand trembled, her stomach flipping. She had some old makeup from the coronation, she should’ve covered up the bruise to avoid questions.

Yet, in careful and deliberate strokes, she admitted, _My stepmother._

Something flashed in the mirror as Felix gripped his notebook, bright enough it left an afterimage in Annette’s eyelids when she blinked. She stared at it, lips parted in surprise, realizing long after it faded that it was a Crest.

What—

Felix wrote back, in brief:

_I_ _’ll kill her._

Annette didn’t know how she felt about those three simple words, didn’t know how to make sense of the strange swoop in her chest that clashed with a rising sense of alarm. Did it flatter her, that Felix would make such a promise, or did it _scare_ her?

She replied, _It_ _’s just a bruise._ The least of Cornelia’s offenses, but she wasn’t sure she wanted Felix to know that.

Yet.

He scribbled quickly, _She hurt you._

Annette’s grip on her quill tightened, her mind buzzing. Could it really be that simple to him? _She_ _’s dangerous,_ she replied.

_So am I. I_ _’m not training with a sword for nothing._

Her breath caught, and she met his eyes for a beat before his slipped away. He never held her gaze for long, something she’d always written off as shyness, but when his cheeks colored she began to wonder if he might—

But no, that was absurd.

She cleared her throat to dispel her own awkwardness and wrote, _She_ _’s my problem, not yours._

Felix pointed to the line he wrote before, tapping it twice for emphasis: _She hurt you._

Annette almost smiled, suddenly feeling a little shy herself, which she knew was silly in this situation but his insistence warmed her. Was she really so important to him, that he would seek to protect her without knowing even the half of everything she suffered with Cornelia?

She could tell him then, she realized, though it might come at the risk of him doing something…hasty. And perhaps telling him at all was hasty on her part, but she grew so very tired of dealing with this alone.

Felix changed the topic himself:

_You met ~~the boar~~ Dimitri after his coronation. Why didn_ _’t you meet me later? Was it because of_ _ her _ _?_

Oh. Annette frowned at his notebook before staring down at her own. Ink dripped on her page as she wrote, only to scratch out every attempt at an explanation, everything from her father’s presence leaving her in a shock to Cornelia’s interference to her own innate fear of Felix rejecting her.

But he was in the mirror now, wasn’t he? Maybe she feared that for nothing.

_In part,_ she admitted at last. _I think I met your father too._

Felix’s brow furrowed before he scowled again. _Did he say anything foolish to you?_

Annette’s lips twitched as she wrote, _No. I don_ _’t think he likes my stepmother though, but she probably deserves it._

_He has some sense then._ He looked at her, briefly, but intent enough heat rushed to her face. _What else?_

_What do you mean?_ Annette wondered, her eyebrow lifting.

_Something else is bothering you. What happened?_

“I…” Her grip on the notepad tightened, and her gaze slid past him, into his…what she’d always assumed was his bedchamber, though she couldn’t identify any furniture. She’d always had this almost…intimate peek into his life and never really realized it, yet she’d never before thought to ask him if he was noble or commoner or for his family name.

Well, perhaps the quality of his clothes and that he carried a sword should’ve made one of those things obvious.

_I saw my father too,_ she ended up scribbling quicker than her heart beat. _It was a shock._

_Is he back then?_ Felix asked.

_No,_ she confessed with a regretful frown and a tug in her chest. _He_ _’s a Knight of Seiros now. He was part of the Archbishop’s escort._

He rolled his eyes. _He doesn_ _’t deserve you._

Annette wiped at her eyes, but frowned at her fingers when they came away dry. She’d grown so accustomed to tears accompanying the ache that she hadn’t realized she stopped shedding them for her father.

Her gaze flicked up to the mirror, to Felix watching her with a peculiar expression on his face. His hand, the one clutching his quill, curled into a tighter fist.

On impulse Annette set her notepad and quill aside before pressing her palm against the mirror, just like she did the day she discovered it, when the boy on the other side was a stranger rather than a friend, an oddity rather than someone who could cheer her even if he rarely said the right thing.

Felix watched her warily enough her stomach writhed with nerves and a rush of embarrassment at what she did, but before she could take her hand away he dropped his notebook and braced his hand opposite hers.

All Annette felt under her fingertips was cool silver warmed only by her own flesh, but where his fingers, so much longer than hers, bent slightly her imagination could supply the rest. Her fingers slotted between his, his hand warm in hers…

As unattainable as ever.

Her hand fell away first, clasped in her other, and though her cheeks were warm her chest was tight as she turned away and collected her notepad. She exhaled in a huff, trying to steady her heartbeat, and when she finally found it in herself to face Felix again he didn’t look at her.

But his hand curled and uncurled, as if to stretch out his fingers, before he picked up his quill and wrote into his notebook, _I still want to meet. Please._

_So you can listen to me play my harp?_ Annette wrote back, though it was hardly what she meant with her breath sticking in her lungs.

_~~Yes. No.~~ _ _Maybe a little._

She smiled, her flush creeping down her neck, but it slipped away as she confessed with a trembling hand, _I think I saw you too, but I didn_ _’t really know who you were before so I was just shocked._

Felix’s eyes widened very slightly as he read her probably illegible scribbles. _You saw me?_

Annette nodded and said, _My stepmother didn_ _’t let me get far._

_I waited for you after like we agreed,_ he wrote. _You couldn_ _’t sneak away?_

She was about to shake her head, only to hesitate and shrug. When his gaze snapped to her, narrowed and the slightest bit suspicious, she avoided it before carefully shaping the words, _My stepmother wanted to use me to better position herself in court, and she tried it with the king at first but maybe if she somehow finds out I already know you she_ _’d “settle” for the son of—_

Ink streaked across the page when a crash erupted downstairs.

Annette’s heart jumped into her throat. She stumbled over her hem as she jumped to her feet to the dark tune of dread deep in her abdomen.

Felix, of course, noticed, flashing her his notebook and pointing to, _What happened?_

She shook her head. Her pulse pounded in her ears, driving away her concentration, but not drowning out the sound of heavy footsteps climbing the stairs.

Annette dove for the sheet she used to drape the mirror, but the attic’s trapdoor burst open with such force it slammed against the floor and made dust rain from the ceiling. Cornelia climbed in, her usually carefully styled hair in disarray and her elegant court dress crooked on her frame. Makeup streaked her cheeks as if she’d been crying, but when her face turned to Annette her expression was full of venom.

She froze, between Cornelia and the enchanted mirror. “What—”

“When I ask that you prepare dinner for me after a long day of _work_ ,” she seethed, “I would like it fresh and edible, not whatever gruel you sought to feed me tonight!”

Food? This was about _food_? Annette’s lips parted in surprise, but she managed to keep her composure to suggest, “You’re a mage. You can heat—”

“I did not come all the way to the attic to receive lip from you!” Cornelia snapped, making her flinch. “What was so important up here you didn’t wait for me to return downstairs?”

“I—nothing!” Annette retorted. Her grip on the sheet tightened, her heart racing as she stepped closer to the mirror, hoping Felix had slipped away and hidden from view. “I finished my chores, so I came up here—”

“Lazy girl,” she hissed before reaching for a book she left lying in view. “Came up here to read? You’ll never rise anywhere if you don’t work hard! And what is—I see.” Cornelia’s demeanor shifted, an icy calm overtaking her. “You’ve been studying magic behind my back, haven’t you?”

“I—”

“Then since Lambert’s whelp has no more use for me, why don’t I give you a demonstration?” She dropped the book - one of her _mother_ _’s_ \- on the floor and raised her arms.

The musty air in the attic hummed with energy and intent as a brilliant violet glyph flared into life. A single pinpoint of energy filtered through it and struck the book.

The pages burst into violet flame, filling the attic with an acrid, poisonous smoke that made Annette’s eyes water. She coughed as she lunged for the book, desperate to rescue it, already weaving her own glyph for Wind to put out the flames.

But dark magic would resist her effort, even if she was more practiced in applying the theory. Her glyph flickered feebly, and the breeze she summoned wouldn’t have blown out a candle.

Yet it stoked her frustration.

Annette gritted her teeth as she faced Cornelia. “What do you _want_ from me?” she demanded. “What did I ever do to you?”

“You’re a useless distraction in my ambitions,” she told her almost simply. “You’re a tool, and I’ve done my best to make use of you, but it seems I’ve not tried hard enough.”

“I’m not _your_ —”

“You’re worse than ungrateful, but you _will_ repay me by serving me whether you want to or not!”

“Well, I don’t—”

Cornelia’s gaze finally slid past her. “And what is—no, _who_ is—” Her eyes widened as a snarl distorted her face.

Annette’s blood ran cold even before she spun around and found Felix, the idiot, still in the mirror. As if through a film of oil, she watched him raise his sword before realizing it would be useless and tossing it aside, anger etched into his face before he struck out at the mirror with a fist.

A ripple distorted across its surface from that point of contact, and for one frozen heartbeat Annette thought he might, somehow, slip through to her side.

“Perhaps…but no, by all accounts the son is as intractable a pest as the father,” Cornelia pronounced in an almost thoughtful voice. “Easy to provoke, but ultimately…useless.”

Annette glanced towards her, mouth open to protest, for when she again raised her arms she understood her stepmother’s intent as surely as if she’d read it written in a notebook.

She dove for her anyway. “No, don’t—”

Whatever enchantment lay on the mirror was no match for Cornelia’s dark magic.

The image of Felix’s face melted before Annette could watch it morph from rage to shock. Liquid silver sizzled as it slid down the mirror, and from the impact of the violet force the rest of the solid silver shattered.

Thin cracks rent the mirror, pieces breaking and falling to the floor. Annette scrambled towards it, breath short and desperate as she ignored the heat and tried to collect them and keep the mirror together.

“No, no, no…Felix!” she shouted, as if he would hear, as if he ever had.

She didn’t know what became of him, what if the spell somehow passed from her mirror to his, what if it hurt him, what if because she hadn’t been fast enough it _hurt him_ , what if—

A warm silver shard bit into her finger, sharp enough it tore her skin. She stared at the drop of blood that pooled from the cut as if it belonged to someone else.

Heat pricked at her eyes. She stared at the pile of broken silver through a film of tears and flinched when Cornelia commanded, “Clean this mess up. Then come downstairs; things will be changing soon, whether you like it or not.”

Annette barely heard her footsteps retreating down the stairs, or even the soft thud of the trapdoor sliding back into place. All she left behind were a shattered mirror with no more magic clinging to it and the stench of the dark spell that destroyed it.

She shook as she gathered the pieces together, her blood smearing some of them. With trembling fingers she picked up the biggest shard and raised it to her face and—

Nothing but her own blue eye stared back at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *offers a tissue* it's okay, it's all uphill from here. ;_;
> 
> anyway thank you all for your feedback so far, and i hope you liked this chapter! ~~sorry for the pain please note the "angst with a happy ending" tag if you're concerned~~


	3. The Ball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annette meets a few new faces and encounters an old one. After all, what’s a Cinderella AU without a ball or three?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How far into the time skip do you think Felix decided he wanted bangs? I’m going with less than two years
> 
> also i don’t know that this is necessary but content warning for one (1) bawdy joke (thanks a lot Sylvain). also warning for a minor and brief panic attack at the beginning

Annette tugged her threadbare cloak tighter across her chest, shivering at the cutting wind that swept over her. It was a market day, and even early in winter - especially with little snow on the ground - it drew a crowd of tradespeople, if fewer farmers, from outside Fhirdiad.

“Oh, look at that!” Mercedes pointed to a stall laden with hairpins and wood-carved bracelets and necklaces. She approached the woman sitting hunched over on a stool behind her table, and Annette trailed after her. “What do you suppose this creature is?” she asked, pointing to carved pendant that could’ve been mistaken for a horse or donkey if not for the hump protruding from its back.

“Um…is that a camel?” Annette wondered. “I think they live in Almyra. They ride them instead of horses.”

“You’re so clever, Annie,” Mercedes noted with a grin.

“Oh, I’ve just seen pictures of them in a book,” she assured her, though her face warmed at the praise. Not that many books about Almyra made it to Fhirdiad, or anywhere near her grasp. This was one from long ago; she remembered sitting in her mother’s lap and flipping through the pages to look at the beautifully painted pictures…

Annette shook her head to dispel the memory. She had errands to run and not the coin to buy any of the necklaces or bracelets the craftswoman sold.

“How much for this one?” Mercedes asked her, pointing to a bracelet.

Not that she begrudged Mercie the purchase, though jealousy stabbed at her. She turned away, tapping her foot, once for every second spent dawdling and needing to be away lest she be late returning to the house and incite Cornelia’s ire. Of late her stepmother had been in a better mood than at any other point in the two years since the king dismissed her from her position in court, but Annette didn’t want to tempt fate.

She couldn’t bear it if her one and only friend since—if Mercie suffered the consequences for it either.

“Mercie,” she decided then with a glance over her shoulder towards the main street, where the odd carriage bearing a wealthy merchant or noble in warmth and comfort rattled by, “I have to be home soon.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she replied with an apologetic smile. “It’s so easy to lose track of time at the market.”

“I know,” Annette agreed. “Do you have what I asked for last time?”

“Yes, I have them right here.” Mercie reached into her satchel, digging past her own purchases before withdrawing a thick pamphlet that she handed to Annette. “That was the entrance exam I took last year,” she explained, “though it’s probably a little different this year.”

“It’ll be similar enough and give me an idea of what I need to study,” she reassured her. Excitement made her heart skip a beat as she gripped the pamphlet as reverently as she would a book of hymns written in Saint Seiros’ own hand before hiding it deep in her satchel. “Thank you so much, Mercie!”

“You’re welcome,” she replied cheerfully. “But Annie, I was curious…why don’t you visit the Royal School’s library? It’s open to applicants too.”

Annette’s smile grew strained, but she managed to keep it on her face despite the sinking of her heart. “Well, um, I live a little far from central Fhirdiad, and I’m usually so busy I can only study at night.” None of her words was untrue, yet they still rang false to her own ears.

“That’s too bad,” Mercie said with a sigh. “I would’ve liked to show you around campus. It’s really pretty.”

“I know,” she said, unable to help her wistful smile. In the old manse, before Cornelia sold it, a painting of the Royal School had hung on the wall, a gift from her father to her mother when they were courting. Supposedly Father carved the wooden frame himself…

Suddenly Annette couldn’t even glance at the carved bracelets and necklaces without her stomach roiling with nausea.

She bid her friend goodbye and took off through the market towards the main street that would guide her to the house.

It was a much smaller dwelling than the one she grew up in, a ramshackle building at the outskirts of Fhirdiad with only two bedrooms, neither of which Cornelia allowed her to set foot inside even to clean. She’d again been banished to an attic that froze in winter without enough oil to keep a lantern for light to study in secret by night.

Somehow she’d smuggled the harp - her most prized possession - and a crate of her mother’s old dresses from the old manse to her attic in the new house, but she was beginning to doubt she’d ever be able to play it again, much less find a use for her mother’s belongings.

When she enrolled at the Royal School, and escaped Cornelia, and lived away from her influence, Annette would pluck at the strings until her fingers bled, but until then she would keep it silent and close lest her stepmother seek to deprive her of even the promise of music too, after everything she’d taken from her.

Annette kept her walk brisk as she stepped onto the main street. The noise of the market faded behind her, overtaken by the rattling of carriages and the clopping of horses’ hooves and the shouts of passersby. Everyone hurried to their destinations, reluctant to be out and about with winter tightening its grip. The sun shone weakly, low yet barely past its zenith, and a wind made her cloak snap around her.

At least it wasn’t…as cold only a few blocks from the waterfront, but her teeth still chattered within moments. She rubbed her arms and hummed in a feeble attempt to warm herself before picking at a hole in one of her gloves.

“Well, good day, milady,” a cheerful male voice cut into her thoughts.

Annette kept walking, deciding that he either wasn’t talking to her…or any man that heckled her from the entrance of a tavern was better ignored. But her ears warmed under her hood, so maybe some good did come from this.

“Come now, Miss,” the man pressed. “You look so cold. Why don’t you join me for a drink? I’ll send you home much warmer than when you left.”

Her face flushed while her heart raced in indignation, and with irritation stoking an even more intense flame in her abdomen she spun on her heel to give him a piece of her mind.

“No,” she snapped, short and simple.

The man, tall with dark red hair too untidy to have been anything less than deliberate, raised an eyebrow at her. He leaned against the tavern’s wall, wearing a fine, thick coat lined with fur that Annette envied. “Why not?” he wondered.

“Because I’m _busy_ ,” she said simply. “Don’t you have anything better to do than—than stand on the street calling out to random women? Aren’t you _cold_?”

His lips twitched into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I am,” he conceded with a wink. “Why do you think I’m inviting you? The sooner you accept, the quicker I can find a nice, cozy hearth to warm us both up.”

“Get lost,” Annette retorted before stalking away.

And that should’ve been the end of that.

“Sylvain,” another man, his tone on those two syllables so much harsher, cut in, “what are you doing?”

The first man’s heavy sigh drifted towards her. “What does it look like I’m doing, Felix? I’m in search of a charming companion for whom I can treat to a drink.”

Annette froze as surely as if winter encased her in ice. Her heart pounded, and she wasn’t sure if every muscle in her body screamed at her to run forward or turn back and _see_.

“Really?” the newcomer said in a scathing voice just a little deeper than she’d imagined it. “I would say you’re in search of frostbite instead.”

“It’s way colder at home, you know,” Sylvain noted. “I’m surprised at you though, Felix. I’d think you’d tell me being out in this weather builds character or something else stupid like that.”

“Of course not,” protested the newcomer. “I can’t handle my sword as well if I lose a finger.”

“Oh, right, neither can I,” the other agreed before laughing.

“W-would you just get back inside before we both freeze?” he demanded.

“Fine, fine,” Sylvain said. “You’ve worn me down.”

This would be her last chance to confirm, so Annette somehow found the courage to turn around and—

It was him, she knew it, standing on the steps leading up to the tavern. He wore a teal coat lined with fur, and a sword dangled from his hip, and as the red-haired man slipped past him into the building he peered over his shoulder.

When his gaze found hers, when his amber eyes under longer bangs than she remembered widened, Annette knew he recognized her as surely as he did her. Her breath caught, and the intensity in his gaze trapped her even as she took one step backwards and he took one forwards.

“Annette…” Felix said so softly she wondered if she imagined it.

But she could never have imagined his voice sounding out her name.

Annette shivered, from the cold, from the shock, from the sheer burden of an ache she never shrugged off. “Felix,” she whispered, too low for him to hear.

He stepped towards her, arm outstretched, but paused when Sylvain’s voice called out, “Felix, are you coming? Don’t tell me you’re going to convince a girl to join us now too!”

Annette didn’t wait for him to respond, or to try calling out to her again.

Instead she turned tail and fled.

* * *

Cornelia shattered the enchanted mirror two years ago, and in a matter of seconds Annette had lost the only friend she had. He’d been taken from her as surely as her stepmother took anything else.

“It’s for your own good,” Cornelia had told her. “His family is nothing but trouble.”

Annette had wanted to retort that the family her father had created when he married her stepmother and _left_ was nothing but trouble, but she hadn’t been able to speak for fear of bursting into tears again.

She’d written letters of course, even when her supply of paper dwindled and it became more difficult to steal any from Cornelia’s study. She’d etched essays onto the page, poured her heart out in ink, told him everything that she never had the courage or the chance to through the mirror.

 _I_ _’m afraid what she did hurt you,_ she wrote into one.

 _I don_ _’t just play and sing songs, I try composing them too,_ went into another.

 _Sometimes when I plan my escape I wish it could be as easy as you rescuing me,_ she confessed through yet a third.

 _I miss you and your stupid sword demonstrations,_ she scratched onto another.

 _After I graduate from the Royal School I will travel to Fraldarius with my harp and serenade you. Do you think your father would rather employ me as a bard or as a mage?_ Annette wondered once.

 _I think I love you, Felix,_ she etched with a trembling hand into the very last letter she wrote for him, before she hid it away with all the rest she never sent.

Cornelia would’ve found them, Annette knew, and might’ve torn them to shreds or burned them to ashes on the spot. Or she could’ve used them against her in some other way, or even against Felix. She hated his father and blamed him for her fall from court, what if she thought to use her to seek retribution through his son?

All those fears crashed back into the forefront of her thoughts now, after seeing Felix here in Fhirdiad again. At least now she knew that whatever spell Cornelia used to destroy the mirror left him unharmed, but he was so close now, and he remembered her, and she heard his voice for the first time, and she loved—

She couldn’t breathe.

Annette crumpled a block away from the house, falling to her knees on the street and gasping for breath. Her heart hammered against her ribs, sharp and painful, and each stinging gulp of cold, smelly city air left her in want of more.

Her purchases - bundles of dried herbs for cooking, spools of dyed wool to replace a worn scarf, a case of powder for her stepmother’s cache of makeup - tumbled from her satchel onto the ground. She stared at them before collecting them and stuffing them back into the satchel and checked that the fall hadn’t disturbed Mercie’s entrance exam pamphlet.

She focused on that. She still had her studies, and even if she was mostly self-taught she _had_ to enroll at the Royal School. Cornelia despaired of ever marrying her destitute stepdaughter off to someone who could be of use to her ambitions, so sorcery would be Annette’s escape.

Felix…didn’t matter, she insisted to herself. She would not let her stepmother anywhere near him, even if it meant her own salvation.

The very thought of knowing he was so close - she could’ve touched him mere moments ago, if only she reached out to him like he did her - still made her chest ache.

Annette pushed herself to her feet and brushed dust from her clothes. She scowled at the path ahead of her and steeled herself to walk the rest of the way.

She shoved her way through the back door into the kitchen. She dropped her satchel onto a chair and stoked a fire in the hearth before preparing a kettle for tea. Either Cornelia would wonder why she was late returning, or she would demand a hot drink for the afternoon.

While waiting for the water to boil, Annette trudged upstairs to stow the wool and Mercie’s pamphlet in her attic, but as she passed Cornelia’s study voices drifted from behind the closed door.

“…Rufus wants to see his nephew married?” her stepmother spoke with a dark chuckle. “How…ironic. A pity the whelp had no interest in my stepdaughter, though I suppose that could change.”

Annette paused, her heart leaping into her throat. What…

A man’s deep, chilling voice - belonging to one of Cornelia’s strange associates - informed her, “Well, three balls in a row over His Majesty’s birthday next moon seems a bit excessive.”

“A ball in Ethereal Moon?” Cornelia echoed. “In _winter_? Is Rufus mad?”

“Perhaps he wants only the most…dedicated maidens to attend and woo his nephew,” the man offered by way of explanation.

“Or the most foolish,” she replied in a scathing tone, “or the most desperate to wed a king. It is no matter, of course. We have time to set our plan into motion.”

“Is she ready?”

Cornelia sighed and admitted, “I despair of her in truth, but even she won’t bungle this task. She’ll do as I say, at the very least.”

“Are you sure, my lady?” the man wondered with the barest hint of hesitation in his voice. “If anything goes wrong—”

“Nothing will go wrong,” she assured him. “We’ve been waiting for this opportunity for years, and I won’t let it slip through our fingers.”

Footsteps sounded from within, and the scraping of chair legs against the wooden floor. Annette’s heart skipped a beat, fear of being caught eavesdropping gripping her, and she scrambled away and up the ladder into her attic.

She busied herself tucking Mercie’s pamphlet into a drawer and spooling wool around a knitting needle, her shoulders tense, and even when Cornelia shouted up at her to bring her and her “guest” tea did Annette remember the kettle.

But she couldn’t relax, especially not when something was…afoot.

* * *

The invitation to King Dimitri’s series of birthday balls - where he would dance with as many eligible maidens as time would allow - spread throughout Fhirdiad and to all corners of the Kingdom. Many bemoaned the poor timing, but many more had anticipated something like this judging from the traffic from further reaches of Fodlan that rumbled into the city over the next weeks.

Processions with banners streaming Crests found in the Alliance and Empire flowed past Fhirdiad’s walls, and rumors abounded that even the Archbishop would be in attendance to give whatever reunion resulted for the king her blessing. The official word was that the king might deign to wed a commoner if he found her worthy, so even merchants that frequented the markets were abuzz with excitement about the prospect of sending their daughters.

“It would be more exciting,” Mercie admitted when next Annette met her, “if my father was not so…hopeful.”

“You don’t think His Majesty would like you?” she wondered while inspecting a wrinkled little winter apple for bruises (there were many, and it would probably be too bitter if she bit into it).

“Oh, it’s not quite that,” Mercie explained. “I suppose I just don’t really want to marry yet.”

“Why don’t you tell him that?” Annette asked, glancing at her even as she gazed around the market. Her eyes caught on every head of dark hair, every man with a fur-lined hood and sword hanging from his hip.

The briefest fancy of Felix spotting her, grabbing her onto a horse, and whisking her away from Fhirdiad flashed through her mind, but she dismissed it with a shake of her head.

“He’s quite insistent I’m afraid,” Mercie confessed with a slight frown. But she brightened almost instantly before asking, “What about you, Annie?”

Annette blinked. “What about me?”

“Would you marry the king if he was…taken with you?”

Her jaw dropped, but she shoved away the rising memory before she could dwell on it. She managed to giggle, and said, “I don’t think that will happen.”

“Why not?” Mercie asked.

“Oh, well, have you seen me?” she said, laughing. “I’m short and clumsy and I’m covered in bruises!” (None that Cornelia inflicted, not lately.)

“And kind and a hard worker and beautiful!” she added.

Annette smiled, pleased that it was genuine for once. “Well…it’s not just that he might not like me.” (He didn’t.) “I doubt my stepmother will let me go, to be honest.”

“Then sneaking out might be fun!” Mercie suggested. When Annette’s eyes widened, she covered her mouth and laughed. “You don’t have to look so surprised, Annie.”

“But _s-sneaking out_?” It was too much like when she and Felix tried to meet two years ago, and if she came face to face with him—

Oh, no, what if he was at the ball? What if—

Annette would not be going anyway. Cornelia would never abide by it.

“Well, if you change your mind,” Mercie said, “we could get ready together! I think that would be fun.”

“As if I’ll be able to get a dress for one night, let alone three,” she mumbled under her breath before letting a cart selling woven scarves better than anything she could knit herself distract her.

Not that a scarf would help stave off the chill of foreboding that settled in her abdomen.

* * *

“I’m sure even you have heard the news,” Cornelia stated the instant Annette stepped into her line of sight that evening.

“What news?” she wondered, wary, though she suspected she knew the answer.

“The old duke regent is holding a series of three balls for King Dimitri’s birthday,” her stepmother explained. “I’m surprised you haven’t asked to go. A young thing like you, it’s the perfect place to spend a few evenings, don’t you think?”

This had to be a trap, and the instant Annette stepped into it Cornelia would smirk or sneer before stripping her of her dignity or anything else left to her. “As if you care about that,” she grumbled.

“Oh, I do,” Cornelia assured her. “You’ve been so…well-behaved since the king dismissed me, I cannot help but think you deserve a reward, despite all your misdeeds over the years.”

Annette’s eyes narrowed at her, suspicious; her stepmother never offered her something without expectation. “What are you after?” she demanded.

“Perhaps I simply want the house to myself for a few nights,” she said, a smile that she didn’t trust curling her lips, “although while you attend, I would still ask a favor.”

She crossed her arms and sagged. “What do you want? I doubt I’ll be anymore successful…wooing the king this time.”

“You never know, do you?” Cornelia said. “But it’s not so complicated. All I ask is that you dance with him at midnight on the third night.”

“At…midnight?” Annette frowned. “Why so specific?”

“A romantic and auspicious hour, don’t you think?” she posited, her smile frozen in place. “It’s always the hour that breaks spells and enchantments in stories, and when everything is revealed, and who knows? Perhaps dear Dimitri will reveal some affection for you.”

She shrugged, too much at a loss for words to protest further, despite the tension in her spine. But the balls did present a rare opportunity…

Did she dare hope for not one but three nights free of Cornelia?

“Will you be going?” Annette wondered.

“I think not,” her stepmother said. “I am a little old for such events, I fear, and the king will hardly look kindly on my attendance. I would not want to ruin the night for you.”

She frowned, still uncertain even if she wanted to grasp for this chance, any potential for a trap be damned. But her gaze found her hands wrinkled and worn from laundering, her dress with its frayed, stained hem, her boots scuffed and in need of repair, and beneath her skirt stockings worn with holes. If she glanced in a mirror she would find soot dusting her cheeks, and her hair would be mussed and rank in desperate need of a wash.

Knight’s daughter she might’ve been, once, and perhaps due to the best and most rotten luck she’d met the king himself, but nothing would undo the years of trials since her mother died.

Yet Felix had recognized her, and something flickered in his eyes when he did.

“How can I go when I have nothing to wear?” Annette asked.

Cornelia smirked, and she realized then that her goodwill ran dry. “That’s your problem, child,” she noted, “not mine.”

* * *

Between caring for the house, feeding herself and Cornelia, and maneuvering around her stepmother’s associates that trooped in and out of the dwelling as if they owned it, Annette could hardly spare the time to prepare any sort of garments for the balls. She sifted through the stash of her mother’s old dresses, ones that miraculously fit her even if they were in need of some hemming and modifications to align them with more current fashion, but was forced to sew late in the evenings by candlelight, squinting at her sad, loose stitches, shivering huddled under a quilt, and wincing every time she pricked her finger with the needle.

Mercie, goddess bless her, wheedled this dilemma out of her and took one of the dresses to modify herself and her measurements. “I love making clothes,” she admitted to Annette. “And your mother’s old dresses are gorgeous! I’m sure I can make something more than serviceable from them for you.”

Annette nearly cried with relief - or perhaps for the bittersweet tug for missing her mother - and hugged her. “The one you make will surely be the best of the three,” she said, laughing as she wiped a tear away.

“Then you’d better save it for the third night,” Mercie warned her. “If you meet a handsome knight, that’ll be the perfect time to make an impression, don’t you think?”

She smiled. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be best to make an impression on the first night?”

“Maybe,” Mercie conceded, “but if the third night is the last, it’ll be what he remembers you by.”

Annette heard the echo of her own boots pounding against pavement, his voice shaping her name ringing through her ears. She saw his furious scowl and his fist pounding against a mirror - a window - before he melted away.

Her smile turned strained as she admitted, “I’m not sure I want to make an impression, Mercie. I just want to go and have fun for a few nights, maybe dance a little and stuff my face with sweets too. And avoid…embarrassing myself.” Not like last time she was at the castle, not like that fiasco.

And Cornelia expected her to dance with the king after that? Well, she could certainly ask, and he would certainly refuse, and that would be the end of that.

“That’s all right too,” Mercie said with a smile. “Maybe it’s better that way. We can keep each other company.”

Annette grinned and added, “Maybe if I make my mask as boring as possible…”

Mercie laughed.

Her dresses were taken care of, but unfortunately they weren’t the half of it. She owned no jewelry as Cornelia had pawned off everything that had belonged to her and to her mother even before losing her appointment at court and its stipend, so rather than suffer attending the ball with her neck bare Annette returned to the wood carving craftswoman’s stall.

Her fingers hovered over a bracelet with a harp charm. Could she justify the cost with her limited coin? The craftsmanship was incredibly detailed for such small charms, but Annette feared they might look tacky paired with her mother’s old gowns.

The craftswoman sighed. “I’ll charge you for lookin’ if you stare at it any longer,” she warned her.

Annette jumped before saying, “It’s pretty, but I’m afraid I don’t have the coin…”

“I’ll buy it,” Mercie cut in. The craftswoman straightened and brightened instantly as she slid a few coins to her. “And that one with the camel too, please.”

And before Annette realized what was happening, Mercie grabbed her wrist and set both necklace and bracelet on her open palm.

Her eyes widened, and emotion clogged her throat. “Mercie…” she said. Why did she sound so…teary? “You shouldn’t have, Mercie.”

“It was nothing,” she said, flashing her a bright smile. “You deserve something nice for yourself sometimes, Annie, and I like doing nice things for my friends. This is the least I could give you.”

The necklace and bracelet nearly slipped her grasp as she threw her hands around Mercie’s neck. “Thank you,” she said, sniffing.

Mercie patted her back before returning her hug, giving Annette a fraction of the warmth she missed since she still had anything worth calling family.

In the end, she planned to meet Mercie at the little church close to her father’s home, and together they’d take a hired carriage to the castle. With those arrangements in place, Annette’s heart lifted, and she couldn’t help skipping on her way back to the house.

Nothing - not even Cornelia or her strange associates - would ruin these three free nights for her.

* * *

Annette toyed with the harp charm on her bracelet as the hired carriage jolted through Fhirdiad towards the castle. She peered out the window at the deserted streets, watching lanterns streak orange past her reflection, and inhaled to settle her pounding heart.

Mercie outdid herself helping Annette with her makeup, and the effect on her eyes was pretty and subtle, though she would be wearing her mask for as long as she could help it. She held it in her lap, the simple white half-mask with blue paste jewels bordering the eyes and a few bold white feathers framing the face. Paired with her mother’s gown modified, she might even look alluring…though doubtless every woman in attendance at the ball would be in her finest and would shed warm wraps and masks as soon as they set foot in the hall.

Not Annette. She wasn’t looking to charm or marry a king but to just enjoy a few nights out from under her stepmother’s thumb.

In the meantime she would dance with any other gentleman, pick at whatever sweets and sip any wine that might be on hand, and if she found the chance to slip away (and if it wasn’t too cold) she might even stroll through the gardens.

Not that there would be anything in bloom in winter…but Annette wasn’t sure she minded.

She would take care not to come into contact with anyone she might know too, though she hoped her mask would be enough to hide at a distance.

The rickety carriage shuddered to a halt on arriving at the castle. A liveried footman opened the door and offered a hand to Mercie, who elegantly lifted the hem of her gown and stepped down. Annette followed, feeling clumsy even by comparison, and accepted the footman’s gloved hand.

Blessedly she made it to the ground without stepping on her hem - which she hadn’t shortened enough - though she doubted that good luck would last the night.

Annette settled her mask onto her face and turned towards Mercie as she did the same. A cool wind ruffled her hair where it tumbled fashionably loose to her shoulders, and she clutched her wrap a little tighter and inched towards her friend.

Mercie giggled. “Why don’t we go inside already?”

She trailed after her, a sigh of relief escaping her as they stepped past the castle’s gates. Guards carrying spears and wearing the Crest of Blaiddyd emblazoned on their tabards lined the walkways, ferrying a myriad of well-dressed guests across the inner courtyard and towards the central hold.

Annette remembered this pathway from the fiasco of a coronation party two years ago. She remembered walking it with Cornelia’s grip tight on her wrist with her head full of daydreams about an impending meeting with the boy she only ever knew from an enchanted mirror.

She remembered marching back across much the same way, but with those daydreams shattering like the mirror soon would.

She and Mercie melted into the crowd of guests assembling outside the hall. They chattered amongst themselves, clusters of young women with masks finer than Annette’s and holding fans to their chins. She glanced over them, curious, though when each one her eyes rested on proved more elegantly clothed and prepared than the last she tore her gaze away and stared down at her skirts.

Annette wanted to blend in, but it seemed she might attract attention simply by looking so…plain in comparison.

As she and Mercie drifted closer to the hall’s entrance, the voice of a herald announcing guests reached them. She froze, heart skipping a beat in alarm, and said, “I don’t know about this, Mercie.”

“What’s wrong?” she wondered, and Annette could imagine her eyebrow lifting under her mask.

“I need a fake name,” she decided then.

Mercie frowned. “What’s wrong with Annette D—”

“Shh!” Annette hushed her, grabbing her arm and tugging. Her gaze flitted around the crowd, waiting for someone to call her out like an outlaw wearing a feeble disguise, but they didn’t draw a single curious set of eyes. “Nothing,” she hurriedly explained. “I just, um, last time I was here it didn’t go so well.”

Mercie frowned, but to her relief she didn’t pry. “Do you want to find another door?”

“N-no, this is fine,” she said. “Maybe I—”

“Names and titles, young ladies?”

Annette’s gaze snapped to the herald, for they reached the front of the line without noticing. She stared past him into the hall, listening for the faint hint of the music to which couples already danced under the voices of the guests. Her heart beat against her ribs, and an inescapable energy hummed under her skin.

“I’m Miss Mercedes von Martritz of Fhirdiad,” Mercie speaking to the herald somehow burst through Annette’s fugue. “And this is my friend, um, Miss Anne…Fantine!”

She only just avoided wincing, but the herald didn’t question it and merely raised his megaphone and announced, “Presenting Miss Mercedes von Martritz and Miss Anne Fantine of Fhirdiad!”

Annette’s face warmed under her mask, but few people actually turned towards them, too intent on their own revelry. She and Mercie stepped into the hall, and she breathed a little easier once it felt like they walked with fewer eyes on them - or her.

She couldn’t help scanning the other faces, searching for a familiar one behind a mask. Most guests were young - and undoubtedly unwed - ladies seeking to court a king, and from here Annette could spot a line forming from the dais at the front of the hall. Some men milled about, many also young, and most unmasked as well.

“Why do you suppose the men aren’t wearing masks?” Annette asked Mercie as they wandered to the far side of the hall to peer at the line waiting to meet the king.

“I imagine they’re hoping His Majesty will take one look at their handsome faces and fall hopelessly in love with them?” Mercie guessed. When Annette raised an eyebrow at her - belatedly remembering Mercie couldn’t see it from under her mask - she laughed and added, “Perhaps they’re hoping a female guest will settle for one of them if they can’t woo His Majesty.” She stared towards the dais, half-smiling, and said, “Do you dare me to ask _that_ one to dance, Annie?”

Annette followed her gaze to…the king, standing unmasked with a few other men and a woman with blond hair cropped short at her neck. “I mean, I heard he’ll oblige almost any lady that asks,” she noted. Her eyes scanned each person standing on the dais, drifting from the big armored man who towered over even King Dimitri, to the young woman with blond hair, to a middle-aged man who looked so much like the king he had to be his uncle the old regent, to—

Her stomach flipped, her dinner threatening to surface, at the sight of the Duke Fraldarius, Felix’s _father_.

And if he was here…

She turned her face away, towards the dancing, and hid her hands behind her back so Mercie wouldn’t see how they trembled. She’d avoid the dais then, until she absolutely had to on the third night to perform Cornelia’s stupid favor.

“Oh, I didn’t mean the king!” Mercie assured her, tugging her back to their conversation. “I meant the big one in armor.”

Annette glanced sideways again, eyes widening in surprised before a grin tugged at her lips. “I dare you to ask him to dance with you,” she said, “although I hope for your sake he doesn’t step on your toes because that’s so much armor.”

“It might not be so bad,” she said. “Maybe it’ll be a chance to practice my healing.”

She laughed and let Mercie tow her, blessedly, away.

For the first time in as long as she could remember, Annette relaxed, just a little. The noise of the crowd washed away into the background, and snatches of the music from the small ensemble set up in the corner reached her. They played an upbeat tune perfect for a group dance, and she and Mercie merged with the other dancers, trading partners as easily as they swapped stories and gossip.

Annette found herself smiling more often than not as one young man, grinning beneath his mask, handed her off to another. She giggled as she tripped over the hem of her skirts, bubbly without drinking any wine, and raised her head.

“Well, hello again,” a familiar voice said.

Her eyes widened, and she met the gaze of the man that called out to her from a tavern doorway before Felix—

Sylvain wore no mask, perhaps to, like Mercie suggested, show off his admittedly handsome face, and he smiled down at Annette, white teeth shining in the light. “You look surprised,” he said. “Didn’t think I’d remember you?”

“N-no,” she said, at a loss for words.

“Well,” he said as his hand settled on her waist and he turned them around, “how can I forget a pretty face like yours? Though I’ll admit, I wasn’t too sure since that mask does a decent job of hiding it.”

Annette hoped her mask failed to disguise the glare she leveled at him…and succeeded at concealing her rising trepidation. “What do you want?”

“Why so hostile?” Sylvain wondered, his smile slipping. “I admit it was a little…crass of me to get your attention like that at first, but consider that we’re both here to have a good time tonight.”

“I suppose you want to get me a drink again?” she mused with a snort.

“Sure, if you want,” he said, “though the gesture might be a bit empty since I’m not the one paying for it.”

“How very kind of you, Sir Sylvain,” Annette retorted without bothering to modulate her scathing tone.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “You know my name?”

Her face flushed at her slip, and she scrambled to explain, “The other incident, I think I heard your—your friend say it!”

“Oh, I see.” The song ended, along with the dance, and while the other dancers turned to applaud the musicians Sylvain took her hand and bowed over it. “I’m Sylvain Jose Gautier, heir to Margrave Gautier. Pleased to make your acquaintance _properly_ , Miss…?”

Her jaw dropped with shock that he would just… _tell_ her like that. And if he was a Gautier, was she supposed to—

“Sylvain, are you trying to harass every lady at the ball?” a female voice cut in.

Sylvain straightened and turned towards the newcomer - and just Annette’s luck that it was the young woman that had stood on the dais near King Dimitri and Lord Rodrigue, though perhaps Mercie’s luck would be kinder and offer her a dance with that armored knight - to protest, “Harass? I was merely introducing myself to this charming lady here. Ingrid, this is…”

But Annette slipped away, darting through the dancers as they partnered for another song. The musicians struck up a slower tune, but as the violin crescendoed her head spun.

It was a cold night, but the air inside the hall, in the midst of the ball, threatened to stifle her.

She skirted the edge of the hall to a small servants’ door, and once she passed through into a narrow, blessedly empty corridor lined with burning lamps she leaned against the wall and exhaled.

Annette pushed her mask up to wipe sweat from her forehead before settling it back on her face. She wrapped her arms around herself and drew shaking breaths into her lungs one at a time. When she felt more composed, she stood and—

She couldn’t go back to the ball, not yet.

She retreated deeper down the corridor, her shadows dancing alongside her. The noise of the ball faded behind her until the only music accompanying the shadows’ dance was the rhythm in her pulse and the beat of her footsteps.

Eventually the servants’ corridor dumped her into a wider one. A few guests milled around talking in small groups here, and one woman crouched near the opposite wall crying while someone tried to comfort her. A handful of guards in the livery of different noble houses lurked too, and Annette avoided peering too closely at what Crests they wore as she passed them all to venture deeper into the castle.

Within a single turn she was alone with not even a single guard to keep her company. She crossed her arms and shivered at a draft and wondered why she couldn’t just hide in the crowded hall amid the other guests, where it was nice and warm, but she just couldn’t risk it.

Annette didn’t know what she’d do if she encountered Felix again.

She glanced through open doors, half-hoping she might stumble upon the library, curious what wondrous collection the royal castle might hold. Her heart beat a little faster with every guard and servant that she passed, but none assailed or questioned her, not even to ask if she was lost and needed to be guided back to the grand hall.

Torches cast the corridors in light and shadow that played over old, faded tapestries. Antique suits of armor lurked in every corner, keeping her company but putting her in mind of ghosts, of knights that perished in long ago battles. She hummed under her breath, trying to ignore the anxiety squirming in her abdomen, as if the humming could stave off any lingering dead. Did past Blaiddyd kings haunt these stone halls, possess those suits of armor, or was that just one of Mercie’s fancies?

 _“On cold nights like these, the winds do blow, and the ghosties of kings, do creep very slow…”_ Annette sang in a low voice. A shiver of a breeze whispered through her hair and over her neck, and she clapped a hand there before spinning in place, arms raised to cast a spell.

No one stood there. She was still alone.

Her arms fell to her sides, and she released a breath. “Maybe I should go back,” she mumbled.

“I would recommend it, since you seem to be cold.”

Annette jumped as a yelp tore from her throat and echoed down the corridor. She stepped on the hem of her dress on the way back down, and she might’ve stumbled right into one of those creepy suits of armor if not for the hand that closed around her wrist and the warm body that she caught herself against.

Warm…body…not a ghost, she decided. Her hand splayed against a man’s chest, in quite an…intimate position, and she withdrew it while heat rushed to her cheeks and a sheepish smile curled her lips.

And then she looked up.

With eyes wide and bewildered, Felix stared down at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did anyone peep that _entirely_ accidental movie Ella Enchanted reference? seriously, through virtue of her name alone, _Anne_ tte _Fantine_ Dominic was made for a Cinderella AU
> 
> also i've just been so blown away by how much everyone has responded to this fic. i'm so glad you guys like it so far, and thank you for all your kind comments <3


	4. The Harp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He knows me, he knows me not, he knows me, he knows me not, he knows me, he knows me not, he knows me...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With this chapter (longest in the fic!) I achieve peak self-indulgence. I baked this cake for myself but there is plenty enough to share aka please enjoy!

In this moment, frozen in the corridor with only flickering torchlight and their shadows bearing witness, a million and one thoughts crowded Annette’s mind and passed through before she could pick out a single one, before she focused on a few very simple facts:

First, that Felix wore no mask so she had a perfect view of the sharp features of his face and how his amber eyes tried to pierce through her.

Second, that he’d caught her when she tripped, because of course she would, when did she _not_ trip? And that he had yet to let go.

Third, that although he wore gloves, his fingers were warm and secure around her arm.

And finally - most importantly - despite how her heart desperately sought to escape her chest Annette…really didn’t want to escape him again, not when she’d rather burrow against his chest and feel his arms around her and—

Annette did neither of those things. It was too much to expect he would want to embrace her, particularly because she wore a mask, and to him she _had_ to be a stranger. She ignored how her chest tightened and stepped away from him, tugging her arm from his grip.

He let her go without protest, and her breath stuck in her lungs as she waited for him to say something, to demand why she ran away from him at the market those weeks ago, what had become of her in the last two years, _anything_.

She avoided his gaze by looking down and hoped it afforded her some anonymity, because in the end Annette was weak, and even if she pretended to not be herself, she wanted to be near Felix.

Assuming he would let her after she fled from him.

Assuming he recognized her.

It would be better if he didn’t…

The silence stretched too long. Annette clasped her hands together and risked a glance up at Felix only for his eyes to snap to her at the same instant. His gaze darted away, and despite the tug in her chest she smiled.

“You were…singing in an empty hallway about ghosts,” Felix observed.

Her face warmed. Of course he, of all people, would hear her original and spontaneous composition. “It’s rude to eavesdrop,” she retorted. Why couldn’t her heart slow, just a little?

“It’s rude to wander someone else’s castle during a ball too,” he noted, crossing his arms.

“Like you’re doing?” Annette said. She adjusted her mask; thankfully it hadn’t slipped when she fell into him.

Felix shrugged before frowning at the floor and admitting, “I never claimed I wasn’t rude.”

They lapsed into silence, and she smiled at her feet, a sort of giddiness overtaking her. She glanced at him, just long enough to take in how a few strands of hair escaped the ribbon tying it up, before looking away again.

“Um—”

“Are you—”

Her head felt like it would explode with heat while he cleared his throat. “You, um, you first,” she offered.

“Are you lost?” he asked her.

“Um…” Well, she certainly didn’t know her way around. “Yes, I guess I am,” she said. “Do you know where the library is?”

“The _library_?” Felix’s eyebrows rose halfway to his hairline, almost disappearing under bangs he didn’t have when last she saw him in the mirror. “Aren’t you here for that inane ball like every other woman here fawning over the b—the king?”

“Well, I was here for the ball,” Annette conceded, “but then I was curious what sort of books the royal castle’s library had, and I…left.” He didn’t need to know that she left the ball to avoid him and anyone that might know him, or that searching for the library was a rather abrupt change in her plan.

He appraised her, and she squirmed, heart fluttering with nerves. He would see through her mask any second, he would—

“I know where it is,” he said. “You’re on the wrong floor. It’s up one flight of stairs.”

“Oh!” Annette clapped, eager. “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” he said. He scratched his ear, a hint of color high in his cheeks, as he took off down the corridor.

Belatedly she realized he meant for her to follow, and she scrambled to catch up with his longer stride without tripping again. “How did you know anyway?” she wondered. “Where the library is, I mean.”

“I came here often as a child,” Felix told her, “although the last time was two years ago.” His gaze slid sideways to her.

Did she imagine the…assessment in it? Annette nearly stumbled over her hem again as they took the stairs. His hand cupped her elbow to hold her upright briefly, and even through his glove and her sleeve his touch left an imprint of heat on her skin.

She would not survive this evening, would she? Her heart would give out before the ball dwindled.

She shoved away the rush of heat when he let her go and mumbled her thanks before lifting her skirts to avoid the same mistake.

Well, most young noblemen - especially that Sylvain Gautier, she suspected - would’ve offered an arm to assist her, but Felix was decidedly…strange, as strange (or more) than she thought him before.

When they reached the next landing, he led her down the corridor deeper into the eerie, quiet castle, but she found that, for all the shadows and the silence, his company warded off any possible ghosts. She lurked as close to his side as she dared, wary of both tripping and stumbling into him again and of him glancing at her for long enough he might see through her mask to the girl in the mirror, or to the woman who fled from him in the market.

A voice in her head whispered that if he knew, it might not be so bad. They could be friends again, and without the mirror and those leagues of distance between them. Status never mattered then, and it didn’t matter in this instant while they searched for the library, and maybe, just maybe—

But no, even if her mask fell away, if Cornelia caught wind of her stepdaughter Annette Dominic in the company of a member of House Fraldarius, she wouldn’t hesitate to make use of that connection.

Which reminded her.

“Wait,” Annette said, abruptly enough Felix stopped in his tracks and turned to regard her, “why weren’t _you_ at the ball?”

He shrugged with nary a shift in his flat expression. “Because I didn’t want to be,” he said.

Her lips quirked, and she wondered, “Are you jealous?”

His eyebrows drew together in an almost comical confusion. “Of what?”

“That—what was it you said?” Annette asked. When he only blinked at her, she continued, “That all these women were fawning over the king?”

Felix rolled his eyes. “Not even a little,” he claimed. “He’s obviously miserable too. It was his uncle’s stupid idea.”

“Oh,” she said, unsure what else she could say. She carried on their path, letting him overtake her since it was familiar to him.

“If I wanted to marry,” Felix mused in a voice so low Annette doubted she was meant to hear, “I wouldn’t bother with nonsense like this.”

“Well…you didn’t… _have_ to come,” she retorted. She crossed her arms and wondered if she imagined the chill in the corridor deepening.

“I suppose not,” he conceded. “If I’d dug my heels in, my father wouldn’t have done anything.” His gaze slid over her, brief yet discerning, before it slipped past. “I was just…hoping for something, that’s all.”

Annette’s breath caught when she took in his suddenly withdrawn face. She clutched her hands close to her chest, resisting giving into the urge to reach out to him, to push up her mask and show him that maybe his hope hadn’t been misplaced.

Moonlight shone on them through a thin window, sharp and white and cold, glinting bright against the buttons on Felix’s formal coat. She shivered and, despite the squirming in her gut, said, “Felix, I—”

The bell in Fhirdiad’s clock tower tolled low and deep, so close it reverberated through her spine, and so loud she wouldn’t be able to make herself heard. She gripped the bodice of her gown, feeling her heart steady with the bell as a breath escaped her, as she let it steal her words and bury them where she wouldn’t speak them.

She counted to twelve. Midnight. The ball would go for at least a couple hours into the early morning, but as far as Annette knew Mercie would want to leave sooner rather than later, and just because Cornelia had given her permission didn’t mean she wouldn’t expect her to wake early the next day for her myriad chores.

And she still had the pamphlet to study for the entrance exam in a couple moons. So much for Annette to do, and here she almost gave herself away.

“I think,” she announced as the tolling faded but for the ringing in her ears, “I should return to the ball. Maybe I’ll find the library tomorrow night.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Felix offered, to her surprise.

He still didn’t extend his arm to her, though that was probably too much to expect from him.

“I’m sure I can find my way back,” Annette protested, though even as they turned and fell into step together a smile tugged at her lips.

“I’m not,” he retorted with a snort.

She scowled at him but he ignored her.

Still, despite her feeble argument, a very large part of her was reluctant to part from him when they reached the corridor adjacent to the great hall. More guests clustered outside than when Annette first slipped out, though very few actually trailed to the castle entrance and towards waiting carriages. Her gaze darted to Felix, and her cheeks flushed when she caught him looking back.

“What?” she asked.

He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed before wondering, “So you’re not trying to marry the king like most of the women here?”

Annette’s jaw dropped in surprise. “What? No, I’m not at all.” She cleared her throat, suddenly uncomfortable, and added, “He’s very nice - not that I would know that, of course! - but…no, not really.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Felix asked. “I told you why I was, now you tell me.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Is that why you think it’s your business?”

He shrugged but didn’t quite look at her. “In part,” he said. “I’m curious, so why not indulge me?”

“Because you—you—” She scrambled for an excuse, though she wasn’t sure she needed one. “You’re awfully forward for a man who has yet to even ask me to dance!”

Felix frowned. “Well, you did fall into me and ask me to show you to the library,” he reminded her.

Irritation flickered within her, yet heat still rushed to her face. “You startled me,” she replied.

“And you—never mind,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. “I haven’t asked you to dance simply because I don’t like dancing.”

“You don’t like d—but don’t you like music?” Annette demanded, his old request that she one day play the harp for him resurfacing from her memory.

He crossed his arms, his whole posture stiff and uncomfortable. “I do,” he conceded, “but I can do without dancing to it. Unless it involves swords, I suppose, but I don’t think it’s that kind of…engagement.”

A giggle burst from her, because something about this felt so very comfortable and familiar. Warmth filled her chest, and with a burst of boldness she said, “If you dance with me, I’ll tell you why I’m at the ball.”

Felix’s gaze snapped to hers. “Will you?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “But you’re going to be very disappointed. It’s not a very interesting reason.”

“I’ll take my chances,” he said, and together they changed direction and plunged through other guests and into the great hall.

Despite the hour, the ball was as lively as ever. The queue to greet the king stretched along one wall of the hall, and aside from his giant of a guardsman and whichever young lady approached to speak with him he stood alone on the dais.

But as Annette watched, a handful of liveried Blaiddyd knights dispersed the line, perhaps telling them they would have their chance on the next two nights. Young ladies melted away, wearing disappointed frowns under their masks, and the king on the dais stepped down with the man in armor.

She flinched when Felix, still beside her, cleared his throat, and when she turned to face him he raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you sure you want to dance with me?” he wondered.

Annette smiled, and with her heart skipping a beat she confessed, “At least once.”

He sighed - he could at least pretend not to be so…put out! - but offered her the traditional shallow bow before extending his hand.

Her heart might’ve given out then and there and she might’ve died happy when she rested her hand on his.

It shocked Annette that, despite his obvious reluctance, Felix led well. He tugged her deeper into the hall, towards the other dancers, and spun her around to face him. His hand settled on her waist, his touch tentative but searing, and she placed hers on his shoulder.

As heat rushed to her face she fixed her eyes on the lapels of his coat. He stood stiffly but eased her into the dance with the swelling of the strings, and Annette’s feet remembered practicing these steps with her mother a lifetime ago.

She prayed that she wouldn’t step on his feet or trip over her own, not with her skirts swishing around her legs and how he seemed to emanate a welcome heat, and no thanks to years without practice. Her spine felt rigid, as if all it would take for it to snap was a brisk Wind spell, and she tightened her grip on his hand.

“I hope you weren’t expecting any complicated maneuvers,” Felix spoke in a low voice so no one else dancing might hear them over the musicians’ song.

“Like what?” Annette wondered. She had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes at the precise instant his darted away.

“I don’t know, like a spin or a twirl,” he said, and she felt him shrug under her hand.

“Aren’t those the same thing?” she asked.

“A dip then,” he said. “I don’t know.”

If Annette didn’t know any better, she would think he was flustered from how he spoke almost haltingly, from the pink high in his cheeks and how he kept darting fleeting glances at her face. “You can’t do them?”

“I told you I don’t like dancing,” he grumbled. He guided her through a turn, sharp and precise, and his hand was secure on her waist when she nearly stumbled, as if he’d expected it.

“But you’re pretty good at it!” she noted. “I haven’t had to look at my feet at all!”

“Well, when you’re expected to attend balls like these,” he informed her, “you’re forced to practice.” And yet for all his dismissal, the corner of his lips ticked up.

Annette’s chest warmed and ached at the same time. She hadn’t seen him smile since…the mirror.

Why was it fair that, after two years apart, he could make her feel so much? She was sure she hadn’t felt so strongly about him before the mirror shattered…

The song ended on one long note stretched thin. The dancers slowed and stopped, splitting apart to applaud the musicians, but Annette held onto Felix even when his hand dropped from her waist.

He reached up with it, two fingertips brushing the edge of her mask before they fell.

She released the painful breath stuck in her lungs.

She followed Felix to the outskirts of the hall, her heart racing though she doubted it was for the dance. She grabbed a glass of sparkling wine off a passing valet’s tray and downed it all in two swallows as if that would help steady her nerves.

The bubbles warmed her, which was well and good since drifting away from Felix left her vulnerable to the chill.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said. It wasn’t entirely a lie. She tapped her fingernails against the empty glass, but they didn’t make a satisfying click with the fabric of her gloves as a barrier.

Felix snatched the glass from her hand and set it on a nearby table. “You owe me an explanation,” he said.

“I-I do?” Annette’s now-empty fingers flew to her mask, but she didn’t relax even when she found it in its place on her face.

“If you’re not interested in marrying a king, why _are_ you here?”

“To dance with villains like you, of course,” she said with a feeble laugh. When he frowned at her, she sighed and said, “I warned you it’s not a very interesting reason.”

“Yet I’m still curious.”

“You’re annoying,” she accused him.

“You got your dance,” he retorted.

“You could’ve refused,” Annette pointed out. She hated how that prospect hurt, but she forced herself to glare at him.

Felix scrubbed a hand over his face, and the familiarity of the mannerism made her breath catch yet again. “It wasn’t so bad,” he muttered under his breath. “You’re not…the worst person I’ve met at a ball.”

“I’m…flattered,” she said. “Damned by the faintest praise.” Yet a smile tugged at her lips, and she clasped her hands behind her back, suddenly shy. “I just…wanted a free night,” she explained when his gaze drifted to her face, intent in a way no one ever looked at her. “I can have fun for once, and my stepmother can’t tell me what to do.”

Her eyes widened, and she clapped her hand over her mouth. Maybe she’d said too much, let him catch her in an unguarded moment after the energy humming under her skin from the dance faded and for the single glass of wine in her body.

Felix’s eyes narrowed. “Your stepmother?”

“Yes, she is the…woman who married my father after my mother died,” Annette clarified with a laugh that sounded far too nervous to her own ears. “Lots of people have stepmothers, you know!”

“Right,” he said. He straightened and took her hand. “Is she—”

“I mean, I still have to do her a favor on the third night,” she carried on, wincing at her own babbling, but she needed to distract him, “so when I ask the king for a dance after all, don’t hold it against me?”

“Um…” His grip on her hand loosened, and she tugged it away and hid it behind her back.

“What?” she said, daring him.

“I suppose I should be proud you danced with me first then,” Felix mumbled.

“I wouldn’t mind doing it again,” she confessed. When he raised a skeptical eyebrow, she blushed. “What?”

“Nothing, I’m just a little…confused,” he admitted. “Why are you—”

“Why, hello there.” A newcomer sidled up to them, and Annette stiffened when Sylvain’s gaze slid over her. “Oh, Felix, did you actually make a friend? Will wonders never cease.”

Felix glared sideways at him. “What do you want, Sylvain?”

“I just came by to let you know that your father’s looking for you,” he said. “Wasn’t sure if you’d run off to train in the dark, but I’m glad you’re here.”

Felix sagged and scowled at the floor. “What does _he_ want?”

“I didn’t ask,” Sylvain admitted. “He looked a little worried. Have you done anything stupid lately?” When Felix narrowed his eyes at him, he laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Really, go ask him instead of me. I’ll keep your charming friend company until you return.”

“My—fine,” Felix said, though he rolled his eyes. “Just don’t say anything stupid to her.” He looked to Annette. His gaze softened the slightest bit when it landed on her, and he wondered, “Wait for me?”

The hope in his voice…

“I have to leave soon,” she said regretfully, “but I’ll be back tomorrow.”

The corner of his mouth slipped into a slight frown before he nodded. “Good night,” he told her as he left.

The crowd of guests shifted and concealed him from her view. Her eyes slipped shut, and she gripped her arms and sighed. She needed to find Mercie, but in that moment she replayed the dance in her head and remembered the feeling of her hand balanced on his and—

“You all right, Miss?”

Her eyes shot open at Sylvain’s voice. She found him staring at her, his posture careless and relaxed and an eyebrow arched with curiosity.

“I’m fine,” she told him, shrugging. “Just tired, I guess. Did his father really want something?” Annette couldn’t help asking.

“Oh, he did,” Sylvain replied. “I would not make something like that up. Felix likes to insult his father, but I’m grownup enough to admit Lord Rodrigue still scares me a little.”

“Oh, well, that’s…” She wasn’t really sure what to say to that, but she supposed that anyone that incited Cornelia’s ire the way Duke Fraldarius did would have to be fearsome.

“What did you do to him anyway?” he wondered, crossing his arms. “I’ve never seen Felix look like that around anyone, and I’ve known him most of his life.”

“Um…” Annette smiled nervously and pressed her hands together. “I’m not really sure what you’re talking about, Sir Sylvain.”

“Ah, none of that ‘sir’ stuff, please,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I may have a Crest, but that’s hardly reason enough for you to be so deferential.” His lips curved into a smirk that probably made many young women weak in the knees.

But she just frowned at him; she wouldn’t tell him she had a Crest too. “Well, fine then,” she said, shrugging.

“Still, Felix dancing willingly with anyone when even Ingrid has to trick him into it…” Sylvain’s eyes narrowed before they widened. “Holy—you’re _that_ girl!”

His words knocked the air from her lungs and made her heart race. Her hands trembled as she clutched at her skirts, and she lied, “I-I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“No, no, there’s no other possible explanation,” Sylvain said. He leaned towards her, scrutinizing her less like a future conquest and more like an interesting puzzle. “It’s the simplest too. What did Felix say her name was?” He straightened and snapped his fingers. “Oh, right, _Annette_.”

She couldn’t help flinching.

“That’s what I thought.” He pressed his lips together, some degree of his affability falling away. “What are you after anyway?”

“N-nothing!” she said. “I’m not after anything, I just—”

“So I’m right?”

“You’re…not wrong,” she admitted, scuffing her boots against the floor. “I just…please don’t tell him,” she begged in a low voice. “He can’t know.”

“Why not?” Sylvain wondered, and she wasn’t sure if she imagined a touch of concern in his eyes. “Are you running some scheme to marry the future Duke of Fraldarius for personal gain?”

“No!” Annette denied even as a livid blush rose to her face.

“So what’s the harm in telling him who you are?” He rested a hand on her shoulder - a decidedly friendly rather than lecherous one - and added, “He’d be ecstatic, trust me, Annette.”

“You don’t know that,” she retorted. Frustration flickered within her at how teary her own voice sounded. “I just—I can’t. It’s too complicated to explain, and if I told him he’d at least be mad about me hiding it.”

“Maybe at first,” Sylvain conceded. “Honestly, he’s probably already figured it out but doesn’t want to scare you away by confronting you about it. Beneath that rough exterior lies a sensitive soul, you should know.”

Annette didn’t want to talk about this with a near-stranger. She stared past him and around, scanning the ground of masked and unmasked faces for Mercie.

She found Annette first, gliding over to where she stood stiffly with Sylvain. His gaze instantly snapped to Mercie, and he wasted no time taking her hand and bowing over it to kiss her knuckles.

“Well, good evening - or should I say good morning? - my lady,” he said. “Who do I have the pleasure of meeting so late in the night that I might beg her to dance with me till dawn?”

Mercie took his advance with surprising grace and a giggle as she tugged her hand from his grip. “I’m Mercedes von Martritz,” she said, “though I’m afraid I’ll have to decline your invitation, sir.”

“Oh, you leave my heart in poor condition,” Sylvain pronounced. “The only thing that can possibly mend it is if you return to dance with me tomorrow night.”

“Perhaps,” Mercie allowed. “If my feet hurt less tomorrow. I’m afraid I’ve danced with quite a few gentlemen tonight.”

“If you’re worried about me being jealous, I know how to share,” he said with a wink. “Sylvain Jose Gautier, at your service.

Annette rolled her eyes at the same time that Mercie said, “I suppose it’s nice to meet you, Sir Sylvain, but for now we really must be going.”

“Ah, then I bid both you kind ladies farewell,” Sylvain said. He winked again at Mercie, who had already stepped away, but then the gaze he leveled at Annette was assessing enough it made her squirm. “Think about it,” he told her in a low voice, “or at least give him a reason for why you’re going to break his heart.”

She lowered her gaze, her chest tightening as shame, thick and overwhelming, swept over her. She turned to follow Mercie and accepted her offered arm.

“I missed you after you disappeared,” she said with a sideways glance. Too late, Annette tried to school her expression into something that someone leaving a ball might wear, but from how Mercie frowned she wasn’t convinced. “Are you all right, Annie?”

“I’m fine,” she lied, and this time she managed a fragile smile. “I had fun! I didn’t eat as much as I would’ve liked, but there’s still tomorrow night and the night after, right?”

“Right…” Mercie agreed, but her brow furrowed. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure!” Annette said. “I guess I’m just tired and not really looking forward to my chores tomorrow, that’s all.”

“At least tell me what you were up to while we’re riding back to the church,” Mercie said. “I want to hear everything I missed, and I’ll tell you what I did.”

“A-all right,” she said, and she could tell her some of it. It might even be fun to gossip a little, to put a better spin on the night than her own mind and heart left alone could.

As they settled into the carriage, Annette made sure to ask Mercie if she had a chance to dance with the king’s big knight in armor, and she admitted, “Not tonight, but there are still two nights left. I’ll find a chance. And what about you? I think I saw you dancing with someone there at the end…”

And Annette told her a little, about a young nobleman finding her wandering the castle corridors alone and lost before he guided her back, about chatting and teasing, about their only dance - though she had to ask it of him when he proved reluctant - before his friend interrupted them.

She didn’t tell her she’d already known him and his face and even his voice, that she knew he hated sweets and revelry and disliked duty for chivalry’s sake, that she knew he practiced his swordplay with the same diligence she gave her studies, or that he liked music, or that his handwriting slanted and his letters were long and almost spindly, or that his older brother died years ago and that he once confided in her he hated his father for it.

Annette didn’t say he was Felix of House Fraldarius, that she loved him more than she would ever say, and that before week’s end she would have to resign herself to never seeing him again for the second time.

* * *

“So you’ve found him again, have you?”

Annette froze in the kitchen doorway when her stepmother’s voice drifted to her from the stairs. She turned to find her entering, a slight smirk on her lips and ice in her eyes. “I…what?”

Cornelia sat at the small table and pulled the teapot that Annette prepared for her towards her. “The Fraldarius boy,” she said simply. “You met him again last night, and what a sickeningly lovely time you had.”

Her blood rushed past her ears, the roar threatening to drown out her voice if her words didn’t stick in her throat.

She spooned a dollop of honey into her teacup and stirred without any clink like a high-class lady, her chin resting carelessly on her other hand. “Has my knowing really struck you so dumb, child?” she wondered. “You may not be in my sight at the castle, but I still have eyes on you.”

“You—” Annette cut herself off, her face screwing up because of course Cornelia would still find a way to ruin a night away from her. But if she ruined it for Felix too…

She leveled a glare at her and said, “If you hurt him—”

“You’ll what? Shoot one of your brisk little breezes at me?” She snorted and stood, leaving her full teacup behind, and approached where Annette was rooted to the floor in the doorway. “He’s in no danger from me so long as you remember your place,” Cornelia assured her before prodding her in the shoulder, “ _and_ so long as you understand that you won’t be escaping me, not through him, not through his illustrious family, and not even through an…education.” She reached into a pocket in her dress and drew out a pamphlet…the one Annette borrowed from Mercie.

She reached for it with a gasp, the memory of that disastrous evening two years ago a heel pressing against her chest, but Cornelia held it out of her reach. “Give that—”

Cornelia didn’t even touch her. A live glyph pulsed, and a concussive blast of dark magic sent Annette flying. The impact against the opposite wall forced the air from her lungs, and she stared past her stepmother with her head spinning and her sight full of glittering stars.

“I grow weary of you taking me for a fool, child,” Cornelia said in a soft voice that Annette didn’t trust as kind.

She rubbed her aching head but managed to snap, “I’m not—

“Calm yourself,” she cut her off before sneering, “Perhaps you are worth…investing in.” She tapped the pamphlet against her chin and brandished it at Annette. “I may be willing to allow this endeavor of yours on one condition.”

“Another favor?” Annette groused. She rubbed her shoulder - she might be sore at the ball that evening - and coughed. “All you do is ask for favors you never repay. I’m just a convenient servant to you.”

“I repay you with a roof over your head,” Cornelia hissed, eyes thin with fury. “With your father gone, what obligation have I to care for you? Damn him.”

She rolled her eyes. She’d lost count of the number of times her stepmother cursed her father, the number of times she railed about Annette’s supposed ungratefulness before demanding her complete some inane task.

It didn’t matter how many times Cornelia complained that Annette was a worthless waste of space, and it didn’t matter if she believed it. She would never free her, so Annette had to scrounge up whatever freedom dangled before her, however…false it turned out to be.

“Well, it’s no matter,” her stepmother all but purred, setting Annette instantly on her guard. “You can apply to the Royal School if you fulfill your promise to me on the third night of the ball, and to make it even better, I’ll guarantee your friend of Fraldarius survives it. How’s that?”

“You wouldn’t actually kill him,” Annette said then, her eyes narrowing. “You’re afraid of his father.”

Cornelia scoffed. “Maybe I used to be, but when you’ve fallen as far as I have you forget such simple fears while you claw your way back up.” She threw the pamphlet onto the table and stalked to the back door before spinning around and pinning her with a glare. “Remember that while you enjoy these next two nights to your heart’s content, and remember that his life and _yours_ are in my hands.”

* * *

When she left the castle after that first night it had been far too easy for Annette to pretend, if only for the hours of the day before Cornelia made her presence known, that she’d been a normal young maiden who passed a normal party in the company of a…less than normal young man. She hummed the tune of the song she and Felix danced to while she cooked her stepmother’s breakfast and swept all the floors in the house, and she spun around and retraced the steps during her trip to the well.

She imagined that the scarf she knit in the warmth emanating from the kitchen hearth could be one to gift to Felix…although maybe if she finished it before the third night she _could_ gift it to him.

Except Annette didn’t know his favorite color. She never thought to ask that even when they wrote through the mirror.

She frowned at the knitting needles, and that was when Cornelia found her.

Now, with her heart heavy rather than light with the expectation she would see him again, she tied the braided cord with the camel pendant around her neck. It hung to the neckline of tonight’s gown, a little lower than she was usually comfortable wearing, especially in winter, but maybe Annette deserved to be a little daring for once. She secured the bracelet with the harp charm around her wrist and frowned when her billowing sleeves opened and exposed it.

She cast a weak Wind spell to dry the moisture lingering in her hair from the bath then brushed it out before settling her mask on her head and collecting her wrap.

A gentle rain began falling, pattering against the windows, as her and Mercie’s loaned carriage traveled to the castle. It promised to be an even cooler night than the last, and few guests would likely venture from the magically warmed great hall, especially not without company.

Mercie rattled off her hopes for the evening, about approaching the big armored knight that caught her eye, sampling more sweets from the royal castle’s kitchens, and perhaps even greeting the king.

“He seems like a sweet young man,” she mused from her side of the carriage.

Annette laughed. “You sound like an old lady when you say it like that, Mercie,” she teased.

“Maybe I should say so in front of my father then,” she said. “If I sound too old to wed the king, maybe he’ll get that notion out of his head.”

Annette smiled and peered out the dark, rain-flecked window. “I hope it would be that easy.”

“Perhaps I’ll take that Sir Sylvain up on his offer of a dance too,” Mercie said.

Her smile faltered, her gut twisting with discomfort. “I don’t know,” she said. “He seems a little bit of a…”

“Tease?” Mercie offered with a grin.

“I was going to say ‘ladies’ man’,” Annette admitted.

“Well, I wasn’t lying when I told him I danced with a few gentlemen yesterday,” she said, “although my feet don’t hurt anymore, so I can stand to dance with a few more tonight. What will you do, Annie?”

She stiffened in her seat, flicking the harp charm on her bracelet. “I’ll, um…I’m not sure yet,” she said. “I tried to look for the library yesterday. Maybe I’ll find it today.”

“With an escort?” Mercie’s lips curled into a smirk, and Annette couldn’t doubt who she meant.

“Maybe…” she said, and a little flutter of excitement filled her chest. “He did want to see me again.” And just the memory of how Felix asked her to wait for him brought a flush to her cheeks.

She covered her face with her hands.

Mercie giggled. “That sounds really nice for you, Annie,” she said. “You needed a few good nights.”

Annette lowered her hands and stared down at them before tugging at a loose thread in a hole in one of her gloves. “Yes,” she agreed, “I think I did.”

With an eagerness she didn’t expect after Cornelia’s warning, Annette stood before the carriage even shuddered to a halt. She nearly fell over when it jolted, falling into a giggling Mercie before straightening her mask with a grin and stumbling towards the door a waiting footman opened.

Annette accepted the proffered hand and stepped out of the carriage and—

The hand she took belonged to Felix.

“Oh,” she breathed, her eyes wide with shock when they fell on him rather than the liveried footman she’d expected. She hurriedly tugged at her mask, making sure it covered her face.

But he didn’t look up at her. His gaze was caught on her wrist, and she noticed the briefest parting of his lips before she said, “F—Sir Felix, are you…all right?”

He blinked and glanced up at her. “Fine,” he said. “Are you coming out or are you going to make me wait for you in the cold?”

“Sorry,” she said, swallowing her nerves. “You just surprised me. I didn’t expect you to meet me out here, or that you knew what the carriage I came in would look like.”

Felix didn’t quite look at her as she finally stepped down to stand level with him. “I, um, a friend told me when I…asked.”

“Oh, I didn’t, um…” Distantly she was aware of Mercie waiting to exit behind her, of other carriages awaiting their own turn if not freeing their passengers onto the walkway, of her breath misting before her in the cold, but with how her heart skipped a beat nothing else really mattered.

Felix hadn’t let go of her hand yet, and suddenly Annette was conscious that they still stood out in the open. With how her face warmed it felt as if everyone else on the walkway, from servants and Blaiddyd guards at attention to guests in their finery to the horses harnessed to every carriage, stared at them, but when Felix’s eyes drifted to her face it felt like he only paid any mind to her.

Annette’s breath caught, but she withdrew her hand and asked, “Can you…help my friend? You might’ve given her false expectations that you’re a footman and she might be waiting for you.”

His jaw dropped, but then he rolled his eyes and walked around her to offer Mercie his hand.

He didn’t even spare her a glance, but when she stepped down she smiled up at him and said, “Thank you! You must be the knight Annie told me about.”

“I’m not knighted,” he muttered as he dropped her hand.

“He doesn’t want to be one,” Annette added before she could think better of it. When Felix glanced sharply at her, her hands bunched in her skirts to keep from clapping her hands over her mouth, as if she could take back her words and how…revealing they could be.

Felix never told her that the last night. A Felix of many years ago revealed it to a much younger and more naive Annette that he met through an enchanted mirror.

“Oh,” Mercie said, cutting through Annette’s startled silence. “I apologize for assuming.”

“It’s fine,” he told her, shrugging.

Annette smiled, but she felt the nervous edge to it.

Gratitude washed over her when Mercie suggested they move inside and out of the cold. Felix overtook them, his stride longer, but every few seconds he would pause and glance over his shoulder, as if to check they were still there.

Or maybe to check if Annette was, for his amber eyes always flicked to her.

Mercie left them in the corridor to pass into the great hall alone, but not without lifting her eyebrows and grinning at Annette and, to her mortification, mouthing, _“He’s handsome!”_

Annette covered her face to muffle a groan, because she did not need Mercie to remind her.

Other guests milled from the corridor into the great hall. She could hear the raised voice of a herald just beyond the wide doorway, and her hands shook in anticipation of giving him the fake name Mercie bestowed on her in front of Felix.

“I, um, I know it’ll be warmer inside,” she said carefully, “but I kind of don’t want to go in there.”

Felix sagged and rubbed the back of his neck before confessing, “Me neither.”

A relieved smile slipped onto her face, and she suggested, “Then let’s go to the library?”

He quirked an eyebrow at her then shrugged. “All right,” he said. He nodded down the corridor, away from the great hall and where ball guests stood thickest, and gestured for her to follow.

She kept pace more easily this time, perhaps because he slowed to match hers. He still didn’t offer his arm, but his gaze darted to her face every few seconds, something searching, as if he tried to spot what she hid behind her mask.

The silence grew to be too much, especially with how he looked at her, so Annette found the courage to wonder, “What did your father want from you last night?”

They reached the stairs - the corridor wasn’t nearly as ghostly with company - and took them. “Last—oh. Nothing really,” he admitted. “He’s just paranoid someone like a guest might try attacking Dimitri and wanted me to be on my guard. And…” He trailed off, glancing away

“And what?” Annette prompted. She stumbled over a step but caught herself on the banister, though not without noting how Felix reached for her arm.

“He saw me dancing with you,” Felix mumbled. He scowled at the carpet as they made it to the top and turned down the next corridor, walking past a shadowy portrait of a long-dead queen. “He was curious. That’s all.”

Annette’s chest tightened, and she wondered if his father remembered her from the king’s coronation party. “Oh,” she said. “What did you tell him?”

“To mind his own damn business,” he scoffed.

“I’m sure that went over well with him,” she mused.

“He’s probably…used to it,” Felix said with the barest hint of something like regret flickering over his face. “But he was…well, talking about this reminds me.”

“What?”

He halted abruptly, and Annette followed suit as he turned to face her. He reached into his coat and drew out a sheathed dagger. “Take this.”

Her lips parted in surprise as he offered the hilt to her. She wrapped her gloved fingers around the small hilt and frowned. “Thank you?”

A dagger was a standard gift for young boys, but Annette was neither a boy nor, well, in the right age range. This one had a simple leather sheath, but a sapphire was set into the finely carved hilt.

At least it was pretty, with the jewel glittering in the light, if unexpected.

“I know you can do some magic,” Felix explained, “but just in case something happens, I want you to have another weapon.”

Her eyes widened, and her gaze slid up to meet his. He looked expectant, or perhaps hopeful, and Annette wasn’t sure what he might be expecting or hoping for, but she drew the dagger from its sheath and raised it to examine the deadly blade.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” she said, and despite the unorthodox - if practical - gift, her lips curved into a smile.

Felix’s cheeks flushed red, and he crossed his arms and cleared his throat. “It’s, um, nothing,” he said. “It’s just useful. I…hope you won’t have to use it obviously.”

“Yes, obviously,” she agreed as she sheathed the dagger and tucked it into her belt. “Thank you, Felix.” She rested her hand on his arm and stood on her toes to brush her lips against his cheek.

He stiffened, and Annette froze, and in the silence with them so distant from the ball and the sound of the rain outside fading away she would be able to hear a pin drop.

Felix’s hand brushed her waist before it fell away again, and Annette lowered herself back, her eyes wide and unfocused until she realized she stared at his chest. Heat rushed to her face, and she tore her gaze away to find the eyes of another long-dead Blaiddyd monarch staring back at her, rife with judgment.

 _It_ _’s not what it looks like!_ she assured them silently, but they didn’t seem to agree.

Her heart raced, and her grip on his arm - firm with muscle and _warm_ under his formal coat - tightened before she let go and stepped away from him. She reached up to straighten her mask, her face hot underneath it, before coughing.

Felix cleared his throat and mumbled, “Library?”

“Library,” she confirmed, eager to let the tense moment pass, hoping to find the middle ground where she could breathe easily again.

They walked in silence the rest of the way, Annette unable to find something to start another conversation. Maybe it was the weight of her kiss - she insisted to herself she only did it out of gratitude and not some misplaced impulse - stifling them, or maybe it was just her stupid mask.

And only in the silence did she repeat to herself his remark to her about why he gave her a knife:

_I know you can do some magic._

Her breath stuck in her lungs as she cycled through every word they exchanged since the first night, trying to recall when magic ever cropped up, but she found her recollection wanting. Only in the mirror, with her scrawling speech onto paper before showing it to him, did she ever reveal her studies and ambitions to him.

He knew…or he suspected…but was that so bad anymore? Her disguise was fragile, the slightest nudge to her mask could unravel it, or a well-phrased question, or even Sylvain Gautier identifying her as she’d all but confessed it to _him_. And Cornelia knew, and even promised not to hurt him so long as Annette stayed in line and completed her stupid favor.

But what sort of bargain was that?

Bitterness that her life wasn’t hers washed over her, bitterness and regret that she risked ruining Felix’s too for the selfishness of wanting just a few nights with him. She didn’t know where Cornelia planted her spies, but she didn’t doubt they’d witnessed him greeting her at her carriage and leading her away from the great hall.

And maybe, if it put him in some danger, Felix deserved to know.

Yet Annette hesitated.

“Oh,” Felix spoke up first, jerking her from her spiraling thoughts. He halted outside a closed set of double doors, which he shoved open with a creaking of hinges before stepping into a small, dark room.

Too small to be a royal library, in Annette’s opinion, and her suspicion was only confirmed when Felix grabbed a torch from the corridor and brought it inside to illuminate a…music room.

Her breath caught as she took in each shadowy corner lit by the torch he set into a wall sconce. A harpsichord with a layer of dust coating the cover leaned against a wall, and books of musical scores littered a bookshelf. Her feet sank into carpet as she stepped inside, mesmerized despite her objective, and stirred up dust that tickled her throat.

But nothing caught her attention so much as the harp that sat upright in a distant corner.

Felix followed her gaze, his sharp and attentive. “It’s like…your bracelet,” he noted.

Annette’s fingers closed around her wrist, and she pinched the harp-shaped charm between her thumb and forefinger. “I guess it is,” she admitted with a nervous laugh.

“Can you play?” Felix wondered.

She bit back her automatic response, that he knew she could even if he never heard her for himself, and simply nodded. “C-can you?” she somehow managed to ask.

He shook his head, then shrugged and said, “My mother insisted I learn piano…”

Annette’s lips quirked; he never told her that before. “Did you?”

“Not very…well,” he gritted out. “I didn’t like it.”

“But you like listening?”

“If someone skilled is playing,” he offered. He angled his head towards the harp.

She understood his request as surely as she remembered her old promise to him, yet she hesitated. “I don’t know, Felix,” she said. “I’m so out of practice, so I hardly count as skilled.”

“Do _you_ like it?” he asked.

The pointed question startled her, and she spun to face him fully and found his gaze intent on her. “I…yes, I did,” she said. “To be honest, I really miss it.” And doing anything she enjoyed around Cornelia was always a perfect way for her to take it away.

“Then what’s stopping you?” Felix asked. “No one else is here to listen.”

Her breath stuck in her lungs, and as if from far away she watched him pick up the bench in front of the harpsichord and settle it behind the harp. “You’re here,” she observed.

“Close your eyes while you play then,” he said.

Annette narrowed her eyes at him, unimpressed with his logic, yet he only patted the bench. A sigh escaped her and, admitting defeat, settled on the bench and arranged her skirts around her. “Don’t look at me while I play either,” she warned him.

“Why n—fine,” he agreed, rolling his eyes.

She smiled, though her heart pounded with mingled nerves and anticipation. She raised her arms and hovered her hands over the strings before tugging her gloves off. She ran a bare fingertip along them in the simplest of chromatic scales.

She winced at how…badly out of tune the harp was, though she doubted her own hidden away and unplayable in her attic was any better, yet it felt so nice having its strings under her fingers for the first time in years.

How long had it been since someone pulled music from this instrument?

At first she worried she’d have forgotten every song she ever memorized, but a tune rose to the forefront of her mind within seconds. She hummed it under her breath first and, swallowing her trepidation at performing for an audience, even if it was just Felix, plucked at the strings.

Annette grimaced at every incorrect note or mistimed rest, at every little flaw where her lack of practice showed, but within a few measures the tension eased from her shoulders, and alongside her humming she slipped into the old familiarity of the motions and the song.

An old song she once sang for her mother when she lay abed, in the weeks she ailed before her death, one she helped Annette compose when she still had the strength to sit propped up against her pillows and show her how to transpose the notes in a book.

Her lips shaped the words too, not quite brave enough to sing them just yet, not when emotion swelled in her chest alongside the music, not when heat pricked at her eyes as the notes descended.

The last note faded into silence, and Annette sat there, frozen in its wake until she released her breath and lowered her hands into her lap.

Felix’s shoulder brushed hers, and though she hadn’t noticed him sit beside her she didn’t flinch. She sniffed and reached under her mask to wipe at a tear that slipped past her eyelids.

She reached for her gloves to slip them back on, but something else took her hand before she could, something much warmer.

Annette half-turned towards him, too many feelings welling in her. With heat high in her cheeks, her gaze caught on his before lowering to his lips and—

Felix swallowed, noticeably, and she wondered if she imagined his sharp intake of breath.

She didn’t flinch when he cupped her cheek, when his thumb rested against her chin. Something about it felt inevitable, like no matter how much she tried to avoid it - no matter how much she tried to convince herself she _wanted_ to avoid it - Felix would tilt her face up, and he would lean down.

And when his breath warmed her cheek her eyes slipped shut.

Kissing Felix was as inevitable as a blizzard in winter or a rock gathering speed as it rolled down a steep hill, and Annette reveled in it, in his lips moving over hers as she melted into him, in his touch achingly gentle on her face and a just a little rougher and more insistent where his other hand wrapped around her wrist to tug her towards him. She sighed into his mouth and clutched at the pristine collar of his coat while her heart threatened to burst from her chest and strike him.

The tip of a callused thumb slid under her mask.

Annette pulled away, her breath short and heartbeat stuttering as Felix lifted the mask away. His sharp eyes locked onto hers, his face as red as hers must be, but he swiped his thumb under her eye and caught a tear before confessing, “I-I knew it was you.”

Her lips parted in surprise - and why should she be surprised? - and before he could try to kiss her again, before she could give into his intoxicating touch and let him, she wrenched herself away.

She fell backwards off the bench, pain sharp in her shoulder as she scrambled to her feet. Felix stood after her, eyes wide with alarm, and extended his hand, but Annette managed to stand without his help.

“Annette, wait—”

He still caught her wrist, but she wrenched it from her grip. Hurt flickered across his face, and she tore her eyes away as she blurted, “I’m sorry. We can’t—I can’t—she’ll _use_ you like she does me, I—”

Before she could witness his heart breaking like hers, shattered like the mirror, Annette spun around and fled.

It was the only thing in which she had any true control or skill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *"So This Is Love" plays*
> 
> one day i'll post something Dramatic where one of them does _not_ run away right after they kiss. one day!


	5. The Bracelet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annette misplaces her gown, listens at doors, and hitchhikes to the castle.
> 
> And Felix finally draws his sword.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH BOY here we are, at the most exciting fifth chapter ~~which got 1000+ words longer while i edited it~~ , so very close to the end, and i hope it will not disappoint! <3

Mercie didn’t question Annette when she cornered her in the great hall, nor did she question what became of her mask or even why tears streaked her face. She just nodded in understanding, her eyes wide, before bidding goodbye to the young blond woman she’d been speaking to.

Only belatedly did Annette recognize her as another one of Felix’s friends and that her gaze scanned her with some interest before narrowing.

They slipped away before she could ask any questions.

“I-I’m sorry, Mercie,” Annette said once they settled into the carriage and it rumbled over the street, leaving the castle behind. She clutched herself, rubbing her arms and trying to swallow any sobs that tried to force their way from her throat.

Mercie’s eyes, usually so kind yet discerning, sharpened. “Did Felix hurt you in some way?” she wondered.

She shook her head as shame washed over her and she admitted, “No, but I probably hurt him.”

Mercie opened her mouth to ask a followup question, but when Annette proved unwilling to speak of it anymore she sighed and touched her knee instead. “The coachman can drop you off at your home so you don’t have to walk back in the rain,” she offered.

“I-it’s fine, Mercie,” she assured her. “I’ll be fine. I can use the walk to compose myself before my stepmother sees me, but…” She trailed off with a sigh as she rubbed her burning eyes. “I don’t think I’ll be going tomorrow night. You’ll probably have more fun without me anyway.”

“Are you sure?” Mercie asked. “Didn’t you promise your stepmother you’d dance with the king?”

Annette’s face fell and she couldn’t muffle a groan. Dread knotted her stomach, and she scowled at her feet, hating Cornelia all over again, hating her for what she could do to Felix, hating herself for putting him at risk and for the hurt that crossed his face before she turned her back to it as if that would make it go away.

She should’ve avoided him entirely, feigned indifference from the start.

A sigh escaped her as she nodded and, despite the loaned carriage and how unladylike it must look, pulled her feet onto the bench to wrap her arms around her legs. Annette’s fingers closed around her wrist and toyed with the bracelet and the harp charm that damned her.

* * *

“You’re back quite early,” Cornelia noted as Annette stumbled through the back door, shivering and with her dress dripping water onto the stone floor. Her gaze slid over her critically before she added, “It’s barely past midnight. I do hope this won’t be the case tomorrow night.”

“I’m not going tomorrow,” Annette informed her. She turned to the hearth, relieved she’d thought to stock it with wood earlier, and stoked a flame to warm and dry herself.

“You promised me a favor,” she reminded her. She shifted in the corner of Annette’s eye, her hand resting on her hip. “Surely you won’t be reneging on that now.”

Annette wanted to tell her she was done doing _favors_ for her, had been done for the better part of her life, but she bit her lip and stared into the hearth.

“You will go,” Cornelia said, as if she sensed her unspoken words. “You don’t have to _enjoy_ yourself, but you will go.”

“I—”

“Must I repeat myself?” she snapped, and when Annette dared to glance at her she sneered. “Did I not make myself clear earlier? _His_ life is in my hands, at my fingertips, and on _your_ head.”

Frustration ignited within her, hotter than the fire in the hearth and overpowering her own fear. She stood and spun around, demanding, “Why does it even matter to you? What do you gain?”

She stiffened when Cornelia approached and patted her head like she sought to calm a cat. “Don’t you worry your head about it,” she said. “Just do as I say and go. Perhaps you’ll change your mind and it’ll be the best night of your pathetic little life.”

Annette glared at her, and for once she was glad for the rain as it hid any tears she shed since fleeing the castle, but Cornelia only laughed and said, “I have nothing to worry about, do I? You’ll do exactly as I say, just like you always have, because you have nothing better to look forward to.”

She slipped away from the kitchen, leaving Annette crouching in front of the fireplace alone, uncertain, and trembling for reasons other than the cold and wet.

When she retreated to the attic, a little drier but no warmer, she stripped away her too-pretty dress. Wearing it she’d been an impostor, pretending at someone poised, and polite, as if she had any right to a few nights to forget herself and her place, as if she could be someone who could wander royal castles or draw beautiful music from a harp or kiss the son of a duke. She was just a girl with a dead mother whose father abandoned her to his cruel new wife.

While Annette undressed, something fell to the floor with a clatter. She looked down and found the dagger that Felix gave her earlier in the evening.

Her fingers closed around the hilt and—

She could sell this, she realized, pawn off the sapphire in the hilt for enough coin to get her out of Fhirdiad, perhaps all the way to Arianrhod or her uncle’s lands in Dominic, or even further, where she could disappear, in Enbarr or Derdriu. She’d always wanted to travel outside the Kingdom, see other places that the merchants in the market called beautiful without describing, and if she sold the small fortune she held in her hand she—

But Cornelia would track her down and repay her for her desertion, and Annette would’ve given up the only thing she had of Felix.

She fell asleep clutching the dagger and soothed, just for the night, by the memory of his lips warm against hers.

* * *

Annette woke late the next morning, with weak sunlight filtering in through her sole small attic window. Her head ached and felt stuffed with cotton as if she had too much wine the night before - she hadn’t had any! - and a faint sort of confusion gripped her at how…wrong it felt to wake naturally after sunrise without Cornelia shouting for her to cook breakfast or scolding her for being a layabout.

She rolled onto her back and stared up at the low peaked ceiling before her fingers tightened around the dagger’s hilt. She raised it and unsheathed it, the steel and sapphire glinting with sunlight, the edge sharp and deadly.

She’d never wielded a proper weapon, yet bitter disappointment tugged at her that she could probably do more damage with this small blade than with her magic.

She sheathed it and climbed out of bed, willing - if not eager - to face the rest of the day with a heaviness in her chest.

Cornelia spent most of the day cloistered in her study. Every time Annette passed through the hall on one chore or another her voice and another vaguely familiar male one drifted from within. Their low tones sent a shiver down her spine, but she didn’t dare stop and risk them catching her eavesdropping.

Besides, the only way she wouldn’t linger on her heartache was to keep moving, to throw herself into tasks that busied her hands and her thoughts. She scrubbed the kitchen floor to ceiling (so to speak), until her fingertips wrinkled from the gray, sudsy water. She dusted the living quarters downstairs and shoveled sleet from the tiny yard behind the house. She cooked the last of their meat into a stew with the last of their herbs after staring morosely at their last two potatoes sprouting. She greeted the neighbors and prayed at the tiny altar in her attic and knitted a few more rows to her new orange scarf and brought an armful of wood into the house before sunset when it would be too cold to venture back outside for too long.

After dark Annette danced around the kitchen with her broom. A smile prodded at her lips, her first one all day, as she swept up the shards of a ceramic dish she’d dropped. In the moment she could forget the night before, how sweet it all seemed until it burned to ash and cinders, remember the bright plucking of harp strings and the warm touch of Felix’s hand on her cheek, a memory that, for all the ensuing heartache, she found it in herself to be grateful for.

She should be satisfied with two nights spent in his company, shouldn’t she?

Annette bent to collect the shards onto a dustpan, and when a sharp edge stung at her thumb and drew blood from her flesh and a hiss from her lips, a different time, a different place, a different shattering took her back.

She wiped the blood away with a handkerchief and swallowed around the lump stuck in her throat. She cleaned the rest of her mess before ladling some stew into an intact bowl, setting it on a tray with a piece of hard bread, and taking the lot of it upstairs for her stepmother.

“…sure the girl can handle this?”

Annette, standing outside the study door with the dinner tray balanced against her hip and her hand poised to knock, froze.

“As I’ve told you before, Myson,” Cornelia said from within, “she is more than suited to such a simple task. I doubt His Majesty will recognize her as the same oaf who bumbled through a conversation with him two years ago, and if he does he will be too courteous to rebuff her.”

“You know him better than I do,” the man inside conceded. “And after?”

“My spies tell me he steps away from the ball onto the balcony that overlooks the gardens for a few moments after midnight,” Cornelia explained. “The last two nights he’s only had a single bodyguard for company, once that giant of a man from Duscur and another time that daughter of Count Galatea’s.”

“You doubt they will trouble you?”

“Not at all,” she said. “What is one more death to me?”

Annette stared at the door, confusion filling her before realization struck her, lightning to a tall tree. She clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a gasp and strained to listen through the rush of blood past her ears.

“And the girl’s role?”

“Merely a scapegoat,” Cornelia informed him. “The meanest and simplest of roles to play, but so very crucial for our success. Either way, I _will_ make that brat pay for what he did to me.”

Annette stumbled away from the door, heart racing and breath short, mind replaying the conversation as she’d heard it, and a single sharp reality ringing through:

_Her stepmother and her associate were plotting to assassinate King Dimitri._

In her shock the tray tumbled from her arms, crashing to the floor. The bowl when it collided split and spilled stew everywhere, and Annette didn’t wait for the noise to alert Cornelia to her presence.

She moved.

She bolted from the house, all thoughts of dressing for the ball and meeting Mercie and pretending that she would enjoy herself while avoiding Felix flying from her mind. Her boots thundered against the pavement, air sweeping past her and ruffling her hair, her path lit with flickering lanterns. She had to get to the castle, to warn the king’s knights if not him before Cornelia caught up to her.

It only took a few blocks of sprinting for the reality of this task to catch up with her. She tripped over an uneven paving stone, falling to her hands and knees with shock traveling up her arms and legs. The ground scraped her palms, and she winced at the sting. Her breath came in sharp pants, mist billowing from her lips and the air cold enough to burn her lungs, and she stared at the path ahead and the distance between her and the castle at the center of Fhirdiad.

So far away…she couldn’t run that entire way, not in the cold, and not—

Heat washed over her, sudden and intense. Annette flinched away from it right as a ball of flame collided with the pavement beside her and burst into sparks.

She pushed herself to her feet, gasping for breath and clutching at a stitch in her side even as she spun to face a masked figure in billowing robes.

Not like the masks of ball guests, nothing glittering with jewels or trimmed with feathers but something wicked and evil with a sharp beak and a hint of beady eyes glinting behind it.

“Surrender, child,” the man who’d been with Cornelia in her study said. He raised his arms, promising retribution if Annette didn’t accede. “I have no wish to harm you now.”

“S-so I can just go to the ball and do what you and her want?” she demanded. She mirrored his position, energy sparking inside her and at her fingertips, warming her better than a thick cloak lined with fur could. “So you can…use me against other people?”

“Children are tools for their parents,” the man pronounced. “That is your use.”

“Cornelia is _not_ my mother!” Annette snapped. She whipped her arms around and followed the motions she never dared to practice outside her attic at night.

Wind swept up, cold and violent and unrestrained with a burst of power from her Crest fueling it. She funneled it through her and the flickering white glyph and charged it at the masked man as he started to counter her.

The Wind crashed into his dark spell, a torrent of smoke and the rancid scent of decay rising between them. They whipped up a whirlwind, and every lantern on the block flickered out and plunged them into darkness.

Annette’s own spell backfired. It pushed back against her, knocking her backwards with a gasp. She tumbled to the ground again, bruised and aching and shivering, but before the mage could retaliate she crawled away and stumbled back to her feet and let the shadows of the city swallow her.

She ducked into an alleyway. She wiped dust from her hands before covering her mouth to muffle her heavy breaths and hoped her heavy heartbeats couldn’t give her away. The scent of smoke trailed after her, and she realized that his first spell had singed the hem of her dress. Between two falls her legs ached and her knees trembled, but Annette plowed ahead.

No footsteps followed, no telltale hum of another spell, but she couldn’t be safe.

She emerged onto another street, better lit than the one she left behind. As she stood there, a few carriages rumbled past her, horses trotting over pavement. Guests would be flocking to the third and final night of the ball by now, and Annette could’ve been among them, an ignorant tool enforcing her stepmother’s will. She squared her shoulders and marched, ignoring the shivers at the biting cold wracking her body, ignoring the fear threatening to swallow her, and—

Carriage wheels squealed to a halt beside her, but Annette kept on. She needed to continue, needed to put a stop to this, needed—

“Miss?” a female voice called out to her from the carriage window. “Miss? Do you need a ride to the ball?”

Annette paused mid-step, startled at being addressed as she turned and found a dark-haired young woman without the slightest expression on her face staring out at her. Her jaw worked uselessly, heat rising to her cheeks as she smoothed down her rumpled, worn, _burned_ dress and hair disheveled by the wind and cleared her throat.

In what world did she look like she was going to the ball?

Yet, she couldn’t begrudge this timely kindness, so she smiled and said, “That would be…really nice actually.”

The coachman actually climbed down from his seat to open the door for her, and Annette clambered inside to greet the woman inside a pristine, luxurious carriage with properly upholstered seats that she would definitely leave soot and dirt behind on if she perched on those cushions.

Yet the dark-haired woman - dressed in men’s finery, curiously - beckoned for her to sit across from her.

Annette obeyed with a nervous smile, sitting right on the edge as the carriage lurched into motion. Her stomach flipped with it as she clasped her hands in her lap and tried not to fiddle too much with her harp charm.

Sitting while on the move tested Annette’s patience worse than her own pathetic pace on foot, but rather than allow silence to envelop the carriage she fell back on her manners and said, “Thank you for the ride, Lady…um…”

“Byleth,” she said, and it was an unusual enough name Annette couldn’t tell if it was her familiar name or surname, “and I’m not a lady so much as a…Sister, I suppose.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re a nun?”

Byleth blinked. “No, not that either. It doesn’t matter.” Her expression stayed flat, almost reminding her of Felix outside his more animated moments, as she wondered, “Are you a servant the castle misplaced?”

Annette flushed and stared down at her lap, shaking her head. “I’m a…guest who misplaced my gown, I guess you can say.” She tapped her foot, nervous and fidgeting, and stared out the window, watching torchlight flicker past, waiting to arrive at the castle and bolt inside. This carriage traveled more smoothly than the one Mercie had on loan, and Annette sank into the cushioned seat.

She stiffened when the bell in the clock tower tolled, counting each one under her breath, but when she only reached eleven - _already?_ \- she still couldn’t relax.

“You looked like you were on quite the important mission,” Byleth noted. “Is King Dimitri such a good dancer?”

If Annette had been drinking something, she might’ve choked. Instead her fingers bunched in her skirt and her heart skipped a beat. “I, well, I haven’t had the chance to dance with him yet!” she said, wincing when her voice pitched higher. “Will you?”

“Maybe,” she said, shrugging. “I won’t be too bothered if I can’t.”

“Well, if you can,” Annette said, “make sure it’s before midnight, because after that you might not get the chance!”

Her eyes widened the instant she realized what slipped past her lips, and she clapped her hands over her mouth. Byleth barely frowned, then asked, “What’s that on your wrist?”

She blinked and raised her arm. “My…bracelet?”

“It’s nice,” she said. She held a hand out to her. “May I have a closer look?”

Annette was so stunned by the request that she took it off and passed it across the carriage without a second thought. “I-it’s just a cheap trinket,” she said, because she doubted a lady - nun, sister, whatever - of Byleth’s apparent wealth and status would be impressed with it. “M-my friend bought it for me.”

“Carved so lovingly,” Byleth mused as if she hadn’t heard Annette, “and given with love and care too.” She pinched the harp charm between two fingers.

It glowed a white so powerful Annette squinted her eyes against it. When the white light faded, she blinked furiously to clear her vision of spots and said, “What did you just do?”

“It’s a Ward,” Byleth said, and she returned the bracelet to Annette. “You smell like dark magic, so I imagine you’ll need it.”

All she could do was gape and slip the bracelet back onto her wrist.

Annette stared at it, eyes wide as awe filled her. It looked perfectly normal, yet a powerful white magic spell emanated from it, hot and comforting like a cup of tea in winter. She raised her gaze to thank Byleth for it, but before she could do more than open her mouth the carriage slowed to a halt.

Annette didn’t bother waiting for a footman to hand her out. She fumbled with the latch on the door and shoved it open before jumping out.

“Th-thank you!” she shouted over her shoulder at her savior.

Byleth didn’t even smile; what a strange woman.

But Annette couldn’t think about that while she still had her mission. She blew past an approaching footman in her rush, rejuvenated from the ride. “Sorry!” she shot over her shoulder at him, only to repeat herself over and over as she cut through other guests arriving for the ball and drifting through the courtyard.

A handful shouted at her as she ran, but Annette didn’t slow to hear what names they called her. She let the cold wind spur her on and past guests and servants and guards alike.

She needed to find…someone who could find the king quickly and take him somewhere safer, someone who might have a chance against Cornelia or who would accept her word without question. She needed to find—

She needed to find Felix’s father. He’d worried something like this would happen, Felix even mentioned it to her the night before, she would find him, beg him to listen whether he recognized her from the fiasco two years ago or not.

She all but flew up the stairs to the castle’s main entrance and blessedly without tripping over a single step. Her feet hammered against the polished stone as she ran around guests waiting their turn in the corridor to enter the great hall.

“Sorry, sorry, it’s urgent!” she assured them when she drew too many venomous looks.

“Miss, what are you—halt!” a liveried Blaiddyd guard called after her.

For a heartbeat Annette considered letting him catch her. She could tell him, and he would relay her warning to Lord Rodrigue or the king…though with midnight fast approaching she couldn’t spare the time.

She shoved her way to the front of the queue, ignoring the offended exclamations from the nobles and wealthy commoners waiting their own turn, and burst into the great hall to the herald announcing the entrance of some minor noble from the Alliance.

And then, standing at this end of the great hall, taking in its myriad occupants in bright gowns and flashy masks and the noise swelling from hundreds of conversations, Annette froze.

How was she supposed to find _anyone_ in this chaos?

But that didn’t matter. She still had to try.

The guard caught up to her, his hand landing on her shoulder. “Miss, you shouldn’t—”

Annette lashed out without thinking, magic flowing to her fingertips and a glyph flashing between them. The Wind she summoned struck him in the chest and knocked him off his feet, and he let her go.

“Sorry, I promise it’s really urgent!” she threw over her shoulder before running and disappearing into the crowd of guests.

She remembered the first night of the ball, feeling plain beside all this finery in her mother’s simple gown modified to more modern style and her mask with only a few feathers and paste jewels. Now the contrast was even worse in her soiled garb befitting a servant and her hair mussed by the wind and her hands scraped from a fall and her cheeks flecked with more soot than freckles.

Her gaze flicked over every face, every dark head of hair, looking for someone she knew would help. But then the crowd seemed to part around her, and her eyes drifted across the gap to the opposite end of the hall, at the entrance of the balcony Cornelia had mentioned, and landed on Felix.

Her breath stuck in her lungs and her heart beat that much faster. She could’ve cursed herself for her own silliness, for letting him distract her now of all times, for—

Her feet moved without her permission, taking her towards him, near enough she could admire the sharp edges of his profile softened just a bit by shadows and the cut of his coat across his shoulders. A sword dangled from his belt - he might need that - and as she approached she could see the deep furrow on his brow as he scanned the crowded hall.

His gaze found hers, his eyes widening and lips parting before they twisted into a scowl and he turned his back.

Annette’s chest tightened, and shame swept through her anew. But she swallowed it and approached him anyway.

He didn’t walk away, so she inhaled to gather her nerves and said, “Felix—”

“What do you want?” he demanded, tone harsh.

She flinched, stung by a rejection she more than deserved, but insisted, “I need to talk to you.”

“Now you do?” He snorted and crossed his arms without facing her. “You’ve already made your feelings clear to me.”

“I…haven’t at all,” she admitted. “I—” She cut herself off when emotion swelled within her, threatening to distract her from her purpose. She wanted to throw her arms around him and bury her face into his chest and tell him everything, about Cornelia and her threats and her control, but she settled with grabbing his hand and tugging, hoping he would turn to her. “You need to—you need to listen to me,” Annette said. “There’s something important—”

“Like why you didn’t tell me who you are?” Felix spun around to face her, eyes flashing. “Or how about why you keep running away from me like I’m some—some villain?” Hurt laced his voice however angry his words, and it stabbed her through the chest as surely as if he’d used the dagger he’d given her.

“I-I didn’t run because I _wanted_ to,” Annette retorted. “I had to because I—my—” Her voice broke, and she covered her mouth to muffle a sob, because the last thing she needed now was to cry.

Something flickered across his face then, and he seemed to really look at her for the first time. “Annette, what’s—what are you wearing—your stepmother,” he realized, tone darkening with a different sort of anger. His thumb brushed over her palm, and he must’ve noticed her wince from how he turned her hand over to find the scrapes. “What happened to you? What’s going on?”

Suddenly self-conscious under his scrutiny, she tugged her hand from his grasp and hid it behind her back. “That’s the least of our problems right now,” she admitted.

Felix grabbed her shoulders, touch firm but…not gentle so much as wary. “Did she hurt you again?” he wondered in a low, almost dangerous voice.

“N-not like—not like…that time,” she said. She tore her eyes away from his gaze; she couldn’t spare the time to get lost in his intensity.

“Then what—”

“My stepmother is going to try killing the king at midnight.”

His eyes went round and jaw slackened with shock. “What?”

“My lord, is this…serving girl bothering you?” A couple of Blaiddyd guards approached them, including the one that tried to grab Annette after she burst into the hall.

Her face flushed. She wasn’t sure if it was out of irritation or embarrassment, but Felix didn’t even spare them a glance before saying, “No. Go away.”

“She trespassed—”

“And this stupid ball was open invitation,” Felix interrupted him. His hand slid down her arm to wrap around her wrist, and his tone softened - though it lost none of the firmness - when he told her, “Follow me.”

He didn’t give her much of a choice with his warm hand fitting around her wrist, not that she would’ve had a choice anyway. As they drifted away from the guards, Annette glanced over her shoulder to find them staring after them before one shrugged and left to return to their posts.

“They should know to be on watch,” Annette said.

“They will be,” Felix assured her.

“For a powerful mage and any accomplices, Felix,” she warned him. “Not just for any random…assassin.”

His grip on her wrist tightened, and from somewhere deep within herself she found the courage to slide her hand into his and squeeze it instead. “Your stepmother,” he muttered with a scowl, half-leaning towards her, “she’s—”

“Felix! What’s…going on?”

Annette stiffened and stepped away from Felix, but he held tight to her hand. Her gaze snapped towards the voice and she had to repress the impulse to hide from the newcomer when she recalled how he misjudged her the one time they met.

King Dimitri was taller than she remembered, or maybe he carried more of a presence now two years after his coronation than he did before. His blue eyes landed first on Felix before sliding to Annette, a curious glint in them until he wondered, “Is this the girl Sylvain told me about? The one you danced with?”

Heat rushed to Annette’s face, and she couldn’t help covering it with her free hand. Did _everyone_ she’d met at this damn ball know each other?

Felix snorted. He shifted beside her, and when she lifted her face he’d half-hidden her from the king’s view. “Sylvain has a big mouth,” he complained. “And she’s trying to save your life.”

King Dimitri blinked once, twice, three times before his jaw dropped. “Wait, what?”

“Tell him,” Felix said, nodding towards him. “Where’s my old man? He’ll probably want to be vindicated.”

“He’s, ah, been…distracted by a guest from Garreg Mach.”

“That’s…not like him at all,” he noted, his nose wrinkling with something like disgust before he scrubbed a hand over his face and said, “Fine, it doesn’t matter. Just—”

“What’s happening?” A young woman in light armor approached, her eyes sharp on Annette. “Felix, what did you do? She looks terrified!”

“I didn’t—will you just listen?” Felix snapped, his obvious frustration mirroring hers.

“He didn’t do anything,” Annette assured her. She swallowed her trepidation, though it did nothing for her racing heart, and stepped around Felix before forcing herself to look up and meet King Dimitri’s steady gaze. “Your Majesty, do you remember Lady Cornelia, a mage who used to serve in court before you dismissed her?”

His eyes darkened, jaw tightening as he nodded. “She would be impossible to forget,” he said, crossing his arms and glowering. “She squandered the Kingdom’s treasury for her own personal projects and got away with it by appealing to my uncle’s ego. I was glad to see her go. What of her?”

“She’s my stepmother,” Annette confessed, and if he didn’t recognize her before he surely would now, “and she’s planning to kill you at midnight.”

He gaped at her in a way that she might’ve found comical in any other circumstances, and the woman nearby - Ingrid, had Sylvain called her the first night? - reached for her sword. “She’s…what?” King Dimitri said. “How do you know?”

“Because I heard her talking about it to a…friend of hers,” Annette explained.

“Tell us everything you know,” he said.

And she did, everything she recalled from the conversation overheard in Cornelia’s study, and how she resented him for dismissing her, even how she wanted to use Annette herself as bait to absolve herself of guilt. That she couldn’t help her flicker of anger, how her stepmother could stoop so low to find more ways to take away Annette’s freedom.

To make use of her in such a sickening way.

“So…the balcony.” King Dimitri’s gaze slipped past her. “It’s rather…suspicious that she knows my habits so well. Perhaps Lord Rodrigue was right to be concerned.”

Ingrid frowned. “Your Majesty, we need to get you somewhere safe before—”

“No,” he interrupted, shaking his head. He looked thoughtful, eyes faraway, before he said, “Cornelia is nothing if not stubborn and implacable. We can’t allow her to escape again, so we’ll let her attack me.”

Ingrid’s jaw dropped, and even Felix sputtered, “A-are you out of your mind, boar?”

“Are we even, well, sure we can trust what she says?” Ingrid wondered, nodding towards Annette. “It’s a little suspicious itself, don’t you think, so what if she’s luring you into a—” Her jaw snapped shut when Felix glowered at her, eyes dark, before she insisted, “We still need to be cautious, Felix.”

“No,” King Dimitri said before Annette could defend herself, “we’ll listen to her, Ingrid.” He met Annette’s eyes, his lips twitching into a slight smile, as if she didn’t just tell him someone would try to end his life before the next tolling of the bell. “Thank you for the information, Miss…”

“Dominic,” she told him, bobbing a quick and unnecessary curtsy that would only make her look more like a servant playing at being a noble lady. “My name is Annette Dominic, Your Majesty.”

“Dominic?” His eyebrows rose high. “Are you Sir Gustave’s daughter?”

“I…” Years since her father acknowledged her, so was she still? But he no longer even went by that name, and his surname was still hers, so she offered the king a tight smile and said, “Yes, I am. I hope that won’t mean you’ll think poorly of me.”

“No, of course not, I would never,” King Dimitri said. He sighed and stared at his feet. “I remember meeting you now after my coronation, and how harshly I spoke to you. I apologize; I should not have misjudged you so for your stepmother’s faults.”

His abrupt apology threatened to overwhelm her. Her face warmed and she stuttered, “O-oh, it’s—”

“You did what?” Felix demanded.

King Dimitri’s eyes widened, and he scratched at his cheek while an uncomfortable laugh burst from him. “Well, it is behind us, so let’s just…set up a plan to ensnare Cornelia, yes? Ingrid, would you alert Dedue?”

Ingrid nodded and left after a brief bow, disappearing into the crowded ballroom. In her absence the king’s eyes swiveled between Annette and Felix, and he wondered, “How _did_ you two meet? I was always curious.”

“Well, there was a mirror—”

“Do we have to talk about this now?” Felix sniped as his face reddened. “We need to prepare if we want to be ready for Cornelia.”

“Of course,” said the king. He led the way towards the doorway that led out onto the balcony before glancing over his shoulder towards her. “Miss Dominic, you shouldn’t—”

“I should,” Annette protested immediately.

Felix sighed. “Annette—”

“I know I won’t be a match for her,” she argued, glaring between them (later she might feel ashamed of trying to incinerate the King of Faerghus with her eyes), “but I can help you! And why do _you_ have to be out there?” She turned on Felix, prodding him in the chest with a fingertip. “You’re not one of his knights!”

“And you are?” Felix retorted.

Frustration flickered within Annette, hot and pointed, frustration that she should be rendered useless now after she ran all the way here to warn them. “It’s not just about protecting him,” she said. “It’s about fighting her for myself too!”

And a little for Felix too, because Cornelia would hold a grudge against him for Annette’s defiance.

A muscle tensed in his jaw as her words rang out, before he tore his eyes away from her face.

“Miss Dominic,” King Dimitri tried from behind her, “I understand how you must hate her, but you should—”

“I’ll stay with her,” Felix cut him off in a low voice. His gaze flicked up to meet hers with a steely resolve that sent a shiver down her spine. “I’ll show you that my skill with a sword isn’t just talk.”

Annette’s lips parted in surprise, and Dimitri protested, “Felix—”

“We’re wasting time,” he said, and he shoved his way past him and slipped out onto the balcony.

Annette followed, not bothering to await King Dimitri’s permission - or order - with her own shoulders squared and a tension in her spine. Magic hummed at her fingertips, and she knew that though she was self-taught and lacked experience, she would stand up to Cornelia.

The night air greeted her again, cold and brisk but familiar, and a sliver of a crescent moon shone in the sky. Annette wrapped her arms around herself and shivered as she stepped closer to where Felix stood at the railing.

Without glancing at her, he said, “Stay close to me.”

“Thank—”

“I’m not letting her take you away again,” Felix promised, low and insistent. Behind them voices burst onto the balcony, Ingrid’s and a man’s conversing with King Dimitri, but they ignored them. “Be careful, and don’t do anything stupid.”

“I could say the same to you,” Annette said. The wind bit her cheeks, but she couldn’t help a small smile. “You did try to draw a sword against a mirror once.”

His jaw tightened before a slight smile ticked at his lips, but it slid into a frown all too quickly. “Annette—”

“I was so scared that what she did to the mirror could’ve hurt you,” she confessed in a rush, a flood of words she’d held inside herself for so long they burst through a dam. “I wrote so many letters I never sent because I worried she would find them and that it would make things worse. I thought you could even hate me, because _she_ _’s_ my stepmother, or you might think I’d try to use you for—for selfish reasons because you’re a Fraldarius, or—or—”

Felix cupped her cheek, just like he did before he kissed her in the music room. Her breath stuck in her lungs, and she couldn’t tear her gaze away from his for fear he’d disappear again. But his eyes drifted away first, and he dropped his hand before mumbling, “Sorry, I—I never thought—you don’t know—” He broke off with a frustrated sigh and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I thought…no, I was half-convinced she killed you,” he admitted in a low voice. “Annette, what did she do to you? Why did you never tell me?”

“I don’t know,” she said, lowering her own gaze. “Maybe I just couldn’t bear for anyone else to know since she always tried to take away anything I cared about.” Her fingers closed around his arm, and she stepped closer to him, glancing up at the same instant his gaze flicked down. “I suppose I was still of some use to her at least,” she said with a snort.

His eyes dropped, a deep frown twisting his lips. “I wanted to tear up Fhirdiad and look for her and find you, but then she disappeared and I thought I’d lost you for good.”

“You didn’t,” she insisted. Her heart beat in her throat, but she reached up and touched his jaw, feeling more than hearing the hitch in his breath. “I promise you, Felix, you’ll never—”

A bell tolled, loud while they stood outside, loud in the night and the cold.

Annette’s count never reached twelve.

A white light flashed at the corner of her eye. A gasp escaped her, and without thinking she spun around towards it, between them and the castle, with her arms raised and Felix behind her.

But he didn’t stay there. He drew his sword with a scrape of steel against leather right as a shadowy figure stepped through the pulsing light.

Cornelia’s eyes found them first as she sneered, “How sweet, but I’ll kill you late—”

Felix charged her.

The rotted stench of dark magic reached Annette before a violet lash shot towards him. “Felix!” she shouted, but he dove out of its path.

Too slowly, it struck his side, violet light sinking through his clothes and making him stumble and gasp before he struck out at Cornelia with his sword.

“I don’t have _time_ for you!” Cornelia snapped. Her arm whipped around, and with it went another blazing lash of magic.

It caught Felix around his legs, twisting and tangling them no matter how much he thrashed. It bound them together and crept up and down past his knees until he fell forwards with a frustrated shout.

His sword slipped from his grasp as he fell onto his arms. He reached for it again, but Cornelia kicked it away.

Annette darted forward with panic gripping her, anger fueling her. The decay from the magic drifted to her, making her almost sick to her stomach, but she ignored her discomfort and channeled a brisk Wind through her own bright glyph.

Cornelia didn’t so much as blink when it struck her, barely fluttering her skirt. Her lips twisted into a snarl when her eyes found Annette. “How _dare_ you lash out at me!”

“Y-you’re not hurting anyone else tonight,” Annette said.

“And what will you do to stop me?” Cornelia demanded. Her gaze slid past her and landed on an effectively trussed up Felix. “If you’re lucky, someone will find a counter before I come back and kill him.”

“I’ll kill you first,” Felix retorted. He drew a knife from his belt, but before he could so much as strike at her it dropped to the balcony with a clatter. “What—”

His body convulsed, a flicker of dark magic emanating from the binding on his legs.

Cornelia turned her back to him with a sneer, yet Felix shouted, “C-coward!”

“Fight me or save him if you can,” she told Annette without glancing at her. “What will you do?”

“I—”

A pained yelp from Felix that stabbed Annette through the chest cut her off.

She _couldn_ _’t_ think twice. What could she do against Cornelia? Even as she watched the king’s knights, alerted, fell on her. Ingrid swung a lance towards her before dodging a piercing violet light, and a large man in armor wielding an ax covered her.

And when King Dimitri himself appeared, a frightening smile twisted her lips as she announced, “Aha, he appears!”

She wasted no time casting a fresh spell.

An arc of writhing violet and red spikes flew from her fingertips and towards Dimitri, Ingrid, and the other knight. Dimitri gritted his teeth when a spike caught him in the abdomen, before the knight grabbed him by the collar and all but tossed him out of the rest of the spell’s path. In perfect synchronization Ingrid stepped forward, fast and sharp and deadly with her lance’s reach, but Cornelia’s next spell caught her in the chest and blew her back, tearing a yelp from her throat.

All the while, the ball continued inside, a crowd of merrymakers entirely oblivious to the king fending off an assassination on his own birthday. Dark magic struck a column with such force dust and stone crumbled from it, and the balcony beneath their feet trembled.

Annette fell to her knees beside Felix. Her hands hovered over his magically bound legs, searching for a loose thread in the spell, something she could tug and unravel it to free him. He propped himself up on his elbows, gritting his teeth and grimacing and—

Maybe if she hit the spell with another…

She tried, a Wind glyph bursting into life. She directed it at the spell and braced herself for it to backfire, only for the binding to absorb it instead.

Felix hissed and thrashed away, and guilt bit at her. Annette found his hands and sobbed, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I thought it would—”

He squeezed her hands and said, “I-I know. I…” He trailed off with a hiss.

She felt his frustration as a match for her own, read something in his wide eyes that mirrored the fear clawing its way up her throat. “I think I need a counter spell after all,” she told him.

“D-do you know one?” Felix wondered, his gaze intent on her.

“I…I don’t…”

“Annette.” He clutched her wrists, his fingers warm and grounding. Sweat beaded on his brow, but he met her eyes and said, “I-if anyone can find it, if anyone knows a weakness in _her_ magic, it’s you.”

“I’d sooner be able to cut through the spell using your sword, Felix,” Annette said. Shame and hot tears alike pricked at her, shame at her failure.

Maybe her warning would still save the king, but what would it matter to her if Felix died for it anyway?

She brought this on him herself, a voice in her head that sounded just like Cornelia insisted. Her rebellion earned this, and Felix would have to pay for it.

She couldn’t do this; she didn’t know _how_. The magic that bound his legs was something far beyond her skill level to cast, let alone counter, and—

Somehow, despite the pain still flickering over Felix’s face, he pushed himself up to his knees. Even as she watched he grimaced again, his shoulders twitching as dark magic coursed through him, and his grip on her wrists tightened.

The charm on her bracelet bit into her skin, trapped against her wrist under his palm. “This is my fault…”

Through the contact, Annette felt the faintest trace of the spell, the twisting of magic that enveloped him.

“N-no, it’s not,” Felix insisted. “It’s _not_.”

“Even if it’s not, I-I don’t know how to fix this,” she said. She shook her head as despair threatened to overwhelm her. “I-if you survive it, and once it’s off, it’s dark magic, the only thing that can stave off the effects is white magic and I—”

Yet stronger than the magic binding Felix was the Ward on her wrist.

Annette’s eyes widened. She wrenched her hands from Felix’s grip, tore her bracelet off, and stuffed it into his hand.

 _Please work,_ she begged the goddess or any deity that might hear her. Her heart raced, expectant and impatient and hopeful all at once as she prayed for something she wanted more than anything else in her life.

Felix stared down at their hands as she curled his twitching fingers over the bracelet. “What are you—”

Annette felt the ugly, writhing mass of dark magic fading before she saw it, as the white magic in the bracelet overpowered it. White and dark clashed, faith and decay, something pure to something warped, until the threads of Cornelia’s binding spell frayed and fell away.

The Ward on her bracelet faded with it, spent on breaking such a powerful spell, yet it accomplished its task.

Felix’s gaze lifted to meet hers. “A-Annette, did you…?”

She shook her head and said, “It wasn’t me, it was—”

His arms, steady where they trembled mere seconds ago, wrapped around her and pulled her against him. “Th-thank you,” he said in a low voice that sent a shiver up her spine.

Heat pricked at the corners of her eyes, and she pinched them closed and inhaled the scent of cinnamon and woodsmoke - _him_ , and not dark magic, as if the Ward on the bracelet sucked the stench of it away too.

But Felix couldn’t hold her as long as she would’ve liked, not with the battle that raged behind them. He let her go with a reluctance she understood and reached for his fallen sword.

They stood together, if unsteady.

They were too late.

Cornelia screamed in rage when Dimitri’s lance slashed at her side. The tip tore through her dress and came away bloodied, and she stepped away, one hand clutching at it with her other outstretched to cast a new spell as she backed away, closer to Annette and Felix.

The glyph that pulsed before her was white.

“No,” Annette breathed. She knew what would happen with a chilling clarity and needed to put a stop to it. “She’s trying to escape!” She launched herself bodily at Cornelia, prepared to drag her arm down before the spell could take root, before she could draw from her internal reservoir of magic to cast it, and collided with her with her heart jumping high into her throat.

White light overwhelmed her vision, blinding her, and the last thing she heard before falling into nothing was Felix screaming her name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hate describing dark magic. i can't remember what anything looks like in the game so i did basically just make it all up as i went along and thought "hey what CAN magic do" so. there
> 
> (also assassination attempts are perfectly reasonable plot points thank you very much)
> 
> ANYWAY also thank you everyone for your comments on the last chapter! i hope you liked this one as much (or more)! next one will be the end...


	6. The Dagger (and the Mirror, Revisited)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cornelia refuses to go down without a fight, but so does Annette.
> 
> Or: in which there is one last fight, a rescue, and a happy ending (or a new beginning).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _crosses "finish one long fic for netteflix" off the bucket list_
> 
> anyway here we are at the last chapter. i hope you all like the ending <3

Annette’s stomach lurched as she crashed into the ground. She blinked to clear the whiteness and black spots from her eyes, and when she raised her head it spun.

“The first Warp is always the most disorienting,” a level voice spoke over her. “I’m almost impressed you haven’t vomited.”

Annette pushed herself to her hands and knees, coughing at the ache in her lungs and groaning at the soreness in her shoulder. She sat back on her heels and stared at her bloodied palms before wincing. “What—”

“I confess to some regrets,” the voice continued, this time accompanied by uneven - limping? - footsteps. “I am oddly torn over you in particular. On one hand, I allowed you too much freedom, but on the other I wonder what could’ve been if I’d seen fit to apprentice you instead, converting you mind and soul to my cause rather than simply attempting to break your spirit. In that, perhaps, I would not have failed so abysmally.”

Her heartbeat throbbed dully at the back of her head. Even as she blinked the stars from her eyes a headache threatened to split her open if her eyelids so much as cracked.

Yet the voice, oblivious to - or perhaps uncaring about - her pain, carried on, “I must shoulder some of the blame for closing my eyes to your potential. Imagine what could’ve been, child.” Claw-like fingers grasped her face and forced her head back, heedless to the hiss of pain that escaped her lips. “Imagine what we could’ve done to this pathetic, human little kingdom together, without your father holding us back, without your own weakness in the way.”

Annette blinked, her vision beginning to clear, some of her headache fading away, enough that she could stare past the blurry figure standing before her and recognize the trappings of her own attic and—

A dagger lay on the bed, sheathed and clean.

“Tonight would have gone very differently in that case, I assure you,” Cornelia’s voice filtered through. “Perhaps I would’ve even let you in on the plan. That way you wouldn’t have bungled it so—”

Annette summoned Wind, the glyph blindingly bright in the dark attic, throwing as much of herself into the spell as she could. Cornelia, more startled than anything, let her go and stumbled away from her, but that was all she needed.

She lunged for the dagger.

Its hilt felt clumsy in her hand when she wrapped her fingers around it, fumbling to unsheathe it. She’d never used a knife except to chop vegetables or slice bread, so even with her heartbeat spurring her on she hesitated when she rounded on Cornelia.

Cornelia. Her stepmother, her tormentor. She bled from a wound in her side, inflicted by King Dimitri in his effort to defend himself, and even now, after all the dark magic she’d cast, veins stood out creeping up her face, stark against her pale skin.

She sensed Annette’s hesitation. Her eyes, wide with alarm at first, eyes that seemed to glow with an eerie light, narrowed. “A dagger?” she said, gaze flicking to the small steel blade. “How…cute.”

Annette desperately lashed out at her anyway.

Cornelia cast a lazy spell to bat her aside, and she flew to the ground, rolling, air torn from her lungs and dagger slipping from her grasp. She stalked towards her, an animal to prey, despite her own wound - the gash in her side dripped blood into her skirts - slowing her.

“If you think I’m done with you, child,” she pronounced with a sneer, “you’re sorely mistaken.”

Annette pushed herself onto her hands and knees and crawled towards the trapdoor, frantic.

“You and I are leaving Fhirdiad tonight,” Cornelia informed her. “You may be a failure, but you are _my_ failure, and you should not be so foolish to think that just because you’ve somehow ensnared the heir of Fraldarius that you’ll escape me with or without his help.”

Her pulse rushing past her ears spurred her on, through the horror gripping her. Her hand closed around the trapdoor’s latch.

“Maybe you’re not a lost cause,” Cornelia practically purred. “Maybe the perfect manner to punish you for your defiance tonight is to force you to kill him your—”

Annette wrenched open the trapdoor.

Cornelia gasped, teetering for a few heartrending seconds before glaring at her. “Did you really think to harm me in this way?” she snarled.

“No,” Annette admitted before the air in the attic stirred up and buffeted at them both.

Her spells were so weak, so unpracticed, she didn’t have a prayer of a chance at harming a powerful and experienced mage like Cornelia even with her Crest bolstering her strength, but what they lacked in deadly and precise power they made up for with unharnessed force.

Cornelia fell through the trapdoor, thrashing in a feeble attempt to catch herself on the ladder until she crashed to the floor below. Blood still seeped through her wound, staining the wood beneath her, and she stared up at Annette peering down at her through eyes glazed with shock or pain.

“Well…played,” she hissed through gritted teeth that looked too sharp to be human. She flung her arms up, the air humming with energy before violet light blinded Annette anew.

She threw herself backwards, knowing she needed to move quickly with no more Ward to protect her. She grasped for the dagger, securing it through her belt, and tore the sheets from her bed. She returned to the trapdoor, its borders steaming from Cornelia’s spell, with her stepmother sitting upright below.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

Annette dropped the sheets in a heap on her.

Cornelia’s eyes widened. She thrashed, a spell bursting through a glyph before they draped over her.

She took advantage of the distraction to clamber down the ladder, heart pounding, every step lancing pain up her legs. But she stifled any winces or gasps before she stepped onto the floor beneath her.

She barely set foot past Cornelia before fingers grabbed for her ankle.

A yelp escaped her as she fell, landing hard on her elbows and knees, the shock making her limbs tremble. “Let me go!” she screeched, kicking out at her with her other foot.

“You’re lucky I don’t have another Warp left in me,” Cornelia snapped. She shoved the sheets off her and dragged Annette towards her. “If you don’t cease your struggle, you will force me to hurt you!”

“You’ve already hurt me!” Annette retorted. She struck out again, her knee catching Cornelia in her shoulder, and tried to summon another Wind.

It barely ruffled her stepmother’s crazed hair. She’d spent herself already.

“Hold still, you foolish girl!” Cornelia demanded. Energy emanated off her in waves, a tense static that warped and twisted, like the air after a lightning strike. A dim red glyph flared between them before an invisible force struck Annette’s chest.

It knocked the breath from her lungs, like a fist wrapped around them and squeezed.

Her heart raced with a rising panic, as she failed to draw in breath even as Cornelia let her go and stood.

“An interesting reverse of the Wind for which you have affinity, isn’t it?” she simpered, but Annette barely heard her for the roaring in her ears and the sound of her own wheezing as she fell to her knees. “I don’t want to kill you,” Cornelia reassured her, “but you’ve wasted enough of my time struggling I suspect I may have to if you insist on rebelling further.”

Annette’s head was light, as if she floated, unweighted and bloodless and—

She sucked in a breath at last as the spell lifted, coughing, but with her limbs trembling and only a hint of magical energy beyond her fingertips, she failed to resist when Cornelia grabbed her arm with an ashen hand and wrenched her to her feet.

Her head spun as she gasped for breath, but Cornelia only sneered and said, “Understand that no one - no dashing prince, no shining knight - is coming to rescue you. We’re leaving now.”

Annette tried to dig her heels in as she dragged her across the landing towards the stairs. She tried to fight her every step of the way, lashing out with her fists and feet where spells had failed her, and barely succeeded in slowing her down.

The cold air bit at her tear-stained cheeks when they emerged from the house outside. Annette didn’t know how Cornelia planned to escape Fhirdiad, if she had a horse ready and waiting for her, if any of her associates lurked to assist her. But the street on which they lived was dark, with few lanterns to light it.

Annette opened her mouth to scream on the feeble hope that some neighbor might help her but—

A shadow flickered over the ground before a wyvern screeched overhead, sending a primal shiver of fear up her spine. Wings beat, sending a gust of air over them, _through_ them, and despite the tight quarters a Pegasus dove at them.

The knight astride it lashed out at them with a lance.

Cornelia jerked Annette around, between her and the lance, her heart lurching against her ribs. The Pegasus knight - she thought it must be Ingrid - drew her lance back at the last instant, before its tip grazed her.

At the same time others dropped from the back of the wyvern, with moonlight and lamplight glinting off armor.

Cornelia’s hand glowed dimly, yet brilliant in the dark, as the arrivals surrounded them. She held Annette between her and the newcomers, her whole posture stiff and wary, yet her voice was steady when she greeted, “Your Majesty, how nice to see you unharmed!”

King Dimitri stepped forward, lance with its head glinting wickedly in hand. “Spare me your lies, Cornelia,” he seethed. “Unhand Miss Dominic and surrender yourself.”

“W-why would I unhand her?” Cornelia wondered, the beginnings of panic seeping into her voice. “I caught her for you, since she sought to attack your royal person.”

Annette barely heard her, too busy scanning the faces of those surrounding them, both dreading and hoping that Felix would be among them, unsure what it would mean if he wasn’t. Hadn’t she disrupted the spell that Cornelia struck him with using her bracelet? He should be all right, shouldn’t he?

Her heart beat in her ears, and her chest tightened when she found the armored knight Mercie wanted to dance with, Ingrid with her lance poised to attack, a handful of others with the Crest of Blaiddyd on their tabards.

No sign of Felix.

“More lies,” said King Dimitri. “I had the proof of my own eyes that you attacked, based on her warning. Miss Dominic?” he called to her. “Are you hurt?”

“I-I’m fine,” Annette told him. “How’s—”

Cornelia’s hand grabbed for her throat, hot and buzzing with a spell waiting for her to cast. She tried to flinch away but she held her tight. “My accomplice then,” she said. “It was all part of the plan. She warned you so that you would be in the perfect position for me to kill you, and if I should fail she was to take the mission on herself.”

Bile rose in Annette’s throat, both at the threat at her neck and at the accusation, that her stepmother would _still_ seek to ruin her so thoroughly. “She’s—”

“A likely story,” Dimitri retorted. “Now let her go.” He held his hand out.

“No,” Cornelia said. “She’s my beloved stepdaughter, the only thing left of my darling husband. I couldn’t bear to part from her.”

Annette might’ve laughed if she wasn’t so scared. “Let me go,” she protested, despite the spell brewing in Cornelia’s palm. “I’m no use to you anymore.”

“Why?” she muttered, that single word dripping with venom. “So you can have your happy storybook ending? Look around you. Where’s your knight from the mirror?”

Frightened, bitter tears that she could’ve been so useless and weak bit at her eyes. She tugged on her arm but Cornelia held tight. “It’s your fault this is happening,” she said.

“Is it?” Cornelia said with a note of skepticism. “Look at this mess. Would this have happened if you never drove your father away? Or even if you’d obeyed me tonight? Think about it, it’s obvious with even an ounce of intelligence, that you’re just—”

She cut off with a strangled gasp, her grip on Annette slackening. She didn’t understand what just happened, why her hand fell from her neck and why her jaw gaped, but she tore herself away and fumbled for the dagger in her belt.

She plunged the blade into Cornelia’s chest.

Her eyes bulged with shock, as if the arrow protruding from the arm that had held tight to her hadn’t surprised her, as if she couldn’t explain the burning hatred Annette felt for the woman that tormented her for almost half of her life. She dug the dagger in till sticky blood stained her hand and soaked into her sleeve before jerking it back out.

Cornelia crumpled to the ground, falling prone with blood gushing from her chest, eyes glazed and unseeing in the dark.

Annette stared down at her, Felix’s bloodstained gift in her hand. Her heart raced against her ribs, driving a furious energy through her limbs before it faded and left her trembling.

King Dimitri and his knights swarmed her, and one of them caught her before her knees buckled.

“Easy there, Annette.” Dimly she recognized Sylvain’s voice - she hadn’t realized he was there - as his hands tightened on her shoulders. “How badly are you hurt?”

“I-I don’t…know,” she admitted. “Some bruises and aches, my head hurts…” She clutched at it, wincing.

More conversation drifted over to her, King Dimitri conversing with someone else. “We’ll take her back to the castle,” he said. “A healer can see to her there. She won’t have to…stay here. I’m in her debt, if nothing else.”

“W-where’s Felix?” Annette asked then. “How is he?” She blinked tiredly as Sylvain guided her away from the house. She still clutched the dagger, though numbly she thought of her few other precious belongings stowed in the attic.

“Who do you think shot Cornelia?” Sylvain said. “He should be on—ah, there he is.”

She heard his footsteps, worryingly uneven, before she saw him, his silhouette shadowed from the light of the torches the king’s knights brought. His eyes seemed to gleam when they snapped to her, and his step quickened until he met her and Sylvain halfway.

“I’ll take her,” Felix told him, voice insistent and arms outstretched.

“I wouldn’t dream of stopping you,” Sylvain assured him, and Annette could imagine him winking.

Felix didn’t even scoff as he slipped his arm around her, holding her upright as Sylvain withdrew with a comment about checking on a carriage. Annette sank into him, a sigh escaping her, and a slow smile stretched across her face.

“The dagger came in handy,” she said. She shivered, for though Felix was warm the night still chilled her.

Felix noticed. He helped her lean against the side of a building long enough to shrug out of his coat and wrap it around her shoulders before taking them and scanning her up and down.

Her face warmed under his scrutiny as she clutched his coat closer around her, and she didn’t fail to repay him in kind. Half his hair spilled from the ribbon tying it up so it framed his face, a thin scratch split his cheek, and he’d walked with an unsteady gait that made her gut tighten with worry.

Annette reached up and swiped her thumb across his cheek, watching as his eyes fluttered shut under her touch. “I didn’t know you could use a bow too,” she noted.

“My aim could’ve been better,” he admitted with a venomous sneer that instantly faded. “Can you walk?”

She nodded before wondering, “Can you? You’re limping.”

“I can,” he said. He wrapped an arm around her waist and hers wound around his back.

They didn’t have to walk far before they reached a waiting carriage. A coachman opened it for them, and Felix helped her climb inside.

Her hand bunched in the front of his shirt, tugging him closer until his breath warmed her face. In the aftermath a million and one questions crowded her mind, threatening to slip from her tongue. What would become of her now with no Cornelia ruling over her life?

She could decide, she realized then. Once she healed, she could become anything she wanted: a musician, a scholar, a soldier…anything.

Annette smiled when Felix touched her jaw, and she leaned in and brushed her lips against his, just because she could. He cupped the back of her head, fingers buried in her grungy hair to drag her closer, as he kissed her.

Heat flooded her, even better when she felt him smile against her mouth. Her hand slid up to rest against his neck, and when he pulled away his forehead pressed to hers. His hair fell into her face, so to better see his she pushed the loose strands away.

“I have something of yours,” he told her.

Annette blinked, surprised. “Y-you do?”

“You lost this on the balcony,” he said. He pulled away only to dig through one of his coat pockets, though she still wore it, and tugged something from it. “Give me your hand.”

She did, the one not brown with drying blood, and he slipped something over her fingers before settling it on her wrist. Her eyes widened when they fell on the simple bracelet with the carved harp for a charm, the one she stuffed into his hand to unravel Cornelia’s binding spell. “I—”

“It’s how I knew it must be you last night,” Felix confessed, and when her gaze flicked up to his face his cheeks were stained pink. He met her eyes, warm and intense, and said, “Stay with me this time, Annette.” He took her hand in both of his, trapping the charm against her palm. “Please?”

Annette’s breath caught, and she nodded before all the words left his mouth. “I want to,” she said, and when he leaned in, before he kissed her again - the first of so many more - she promised, “I never want to run away from you ever again.”

* * *

It was, for all intents and purposes, a perfectly ordinary mirror, albeit one with a crack rending it halfway down the middle and with a thick layer of dust coating its frame. Annette’s reflection stared back at her, the crack distorting her face, and Felix’s hovered over her shoulder, a furrow on his forehead.

“The mirror, like you asked,” he said.

Her nose wrinkled as she wiped a streak of dust from the frame with a fingertip. “Why is it so dusty?” she wondered. “Everything else in your quarters is so…clean.”

“Our quarters,” Felix corrected with a mumble, though Annette couldn’t help delighting in how his cheeks _still_ turned a faint pink. “And I hid it after…after yours was destroyed.” He avoided her gaze, both in the mirror and when she glanced over her shoulder at him.

She turned around and took his hands until he looked at her. “Can you at least tell me where you got it from?” she asked.

He rubbed the back of his neck, looking distinctly uncomfortable. It had taken some convincing - and a few bribes in the form of songs - before he let her examine the mirror that was the twin of the one she once had. “Why does it matter?” he’d demanded more than once. “We met, we married, your stepmother’s dead.”

And she’d always insisted, “I know, but aren’t you at least curious _why_ we met?”

And that always took him aback until he’d retort, “I’m just glad we did.”

(He’d say it so simply with scarcely a change in his expression, but it never failed to make Annette smile.)

“Felix,” she said, letting a little plaintive note into her voice.

He rolled his eyes but finally explained, “It belonged to my mother. I think she bought it for the nursery before I was born. It’s custom like everything else, if that matters.”

“The…nursery? A mirror?” Annette frowned, confused despite herself. She rounded the mirror, seeking for any signs of a spell cast on it, but she’d done it so many times since her arrival in Fraldarius after their wedding that she didn’t doubt that whatever spell used to be attached to the mirror broke the instant her own shattered. She ran her fingers along the frame but still felt nothing.

The mystery of the mirror had lingered at the back of her mind through her two years of study at the Royal School of Sorcery and was why she chose a minor course in magical artifacts. Most spells on objects left a sign behind even upon breaking, but on this one not a single bit of magic remained.

By all means it made no sense to Annette, but she didn’t mind, for she had the freedom to examine it.

Not the time, so much. Between other projects, regular correspondence with Mercie amid her own new busy life in Duscur, and the duties Annette took on as the only lady - and the future duchess - in the Fraldarius household, she kept busy, and if certain…suspicion held about her current physical condition, she would soon have far less time on her hands.

And that she minded even less.

Felix’s eyes lingered on her as she investigated, his arms crossed and his face alight with a trace of amusement. She met his gaze from where she stood behind the mirror and asked suspiciously, “Are you laughing at me?”

His lips pressed together, but in the end he didn’t fight a smile. “No,” he assured her.

“Then why are you looking at me like that?” she demanded, glaring at him.

“It’s fun for me watching you so absorbed you start humming,” he informed her.

Her face warmed, but she still narrowed her eyes at him. “You don’t deserve the fun since it took you so long to answer my questions!” she retorted.

He raised an eyebrow, not looking the least bit put out. “I’m answering them now.”

“I’ve been here five months!”

“You’ll be here much longer,” he noted, as if it had anything to do with her scrutinizing the mirror. He approached her, his chest to her back before he slid his arms around her and propped his chin on her shoulder.

And, despite her indignation, Annette sank backwards into him with a sigh, close enough she felt his chest rising and falling with his breathing. She rested a hand on his jaw and tilted her head into his. “Does it bother you that much?” she wondered in a low voice.

“What does?” His body rumbled with his words, and it sent a wonderful shiver up her spine.

“Being reminded of the mirror.” She frowned even as she reached forward and brushed her fingertips against the back of the frame.

He sighed, his breath wisping over her ear, before pressing his forehead into her shoulder. “A little,” he said, “though maybe it’s not so bad while you’re here.”

“I’ll protect you from its evils,” Annette reassured him with a giggle.

“It’s not about that,” he said with a snort that tickled her neck. “It’s about…what I saw, how I couldn’t…do anything about it. All my training was useless.”

She frowned then, half-turning her face towards him when he lifted his. Her fingers slid into his hair, and she suggested, “Maybe rather than dwelling on when it…broke, you can think about the fact it brought us together, in a way. Even if I couldn’t tell you everything, knowing you made my life so much better after my father left.”

His grip on her tightened, yet she managed to turn in his arms to face him properly. “I…am relieved to hear it,” he said.

“Good!” Annette poked his cheek until he grabbed her hand. “We met, we became friends, we…fell in love through this mirror, so _I_ _’m_ grateful it exists.”

He didn’t quite meet her eyes, though his eyebrow quirked. “Fell in love through it too?” he said.

Her cheeks grew hot, yet she stuck her tongue out at him. “Yes? Why is that so surprising?” She scowled at him. “Are you going to tell me it was the ball that did it for you?”

He smiled very slightly before shaking his head. “No, it was before too, but…do you know what one thing the mirror couldn’t prepare me for?”

“Well, if it didn’t show your reflection, anything concerning your appearance, I would think.” Annette’s brow furrowed with confusion when Felix chuckled. “What?”

“It couldn’t prepare me for falling in love with your voice too,” he confessed.

She blinked at him once, twice, as an inferno threatened to overwhelm her. Then she prodded him in the chest and demanded with her voice pitching, “Warn me before you say something like that next time, Felix!”

Felix laughed, the sound warm and wonderful to her ears, before catching her hand and leaning down to catch her lips too.

Annette melted into him, just like she did the first time, but now with the knowledge that neither of them would be going far when they parted. They would just come together again, content that the other would be within easy reach. Even when distance kept them apart, they knew it would never be for long.

And he was right, Annette had the rest of her life to pore over the mystery in the mirror, and one day perhaps the simple inscription etched into the base would reveal itself to her, or to her own inquisitive son:

_For lost children seeking solace, may this mirror gift you your heart_ _’s desire._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank ~~the Academy~~ everyone who read this fic and left feedback and encouragement or even just kudos. and also Rose for beta reading. aaaand i would also like to just revel in the fact that i finally finished posting one long fic and can go back to having two active ones instead ha
> 
> ANYWAY i would love to hear what you thought! and who knows, maybe one day i will finally write a Felix POV interlude ~~i make no promises~~
> 
> stay safe <3

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts!


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